e Service as having made several important improvements in submarine
craft.

From the first it had seemed peculiar, to Jacques de Wissant's mind
unnatural, that such a man as was Dupre should be so keenly interested
in music and in modern literature. But so it was, and it had been owing
to these strange, untoward tastes that Commander Dupre and Claire had
become friends.

He now reminded himself, for the hundredth time, that he had begun by
actually approving of the acquaintance between his wife and the naval
officer--an acquaintance which he had naturally supposed would be of the
most "correct" nature.

Then, without warning, there came an hour--nay, a moment, when in that
twilight hour which the French call "'Twixt dog and wolf," the most
torturing and shameful of human passions, jealousy, had taken possession
of Jacques de Wissant, disintegrating, rather than shattering, the
elaborate fabric of his House of Life, that house in which he had always
dwelt so snugly and unquestioningly ensconced.

He had come home after a long afternoon spent at the Hotel de Ville to
learn with tepid pleasure that there was a visitor, Commander Dupre, in
the house, and as he had come hurrying towards his wife's boudoir,
Jacques had heard Claire's low, deep voice and the other's ardent, eager
tones mingling together....

And then as he, the husband, had opened the door, they had stopped
speaking, their words clipped as if a sword had fallen between them. At
the same moment a servant had brought a lamp into the twilit room, and
Jacques had seen the ravaged face of Commander Dupre, a fair, tanned
face full of revolt and of longing leashed. Claire had remained in
shadow, but her eyes, or so the interloper thought he perceived, were
full of tears.

Since that spring evening the Mayor of Falaise had not had an easy
moment. While scorning to act the spy upon his wife, he was for ever
watching her, and keeping an eager and yet scarcely conscious count of
her movements.

True, Commander Dupre had soon ceased to trouble the owner of the
Pavillon de Wissant by his presence. The younger officers came and went,
but since that hour, laden with unspoken drama, their commander only
came when good breeding required him to pay a formal call on his nearest
neighbour and sometime host. But Claire saw Dupre constantly at the
Chalet des Dunes, her sister's house, and she was both too proud and too
indifferent, it appeared, to her husband's view of wh