c pleasures. He pictured his wife in new dresses by Jay--she
was fifteen years younger than himself, and "paid for dressing" as they
said. He had always delighted--as men older than their wives will--in
the admiration she excited from others not privileged to enjoy her
charms. Her rather queer and ironical beauty, her cool irreproachable
wifeliness, was a constant balm to him. They would give dinner parties
again, have their friends down from town, and he would once more enjoy
sitting at the foot of the dinner table while Kathleen sat at the head,
with the light soft on her ivory shoulders, behind flowers she had
arranged in that original way of hers, and fruit which he had grown in
his hot-houses; once more he would take legitimate interest in the wine
he offered to his guests--once more stock that Chinese cabinet wherein
he kept cigars. Yes--there was a certain satisfaction in these days of
privation, if only from the anticipation they created.

The sprinkling of villas had become continuous on either side of the
high road; and women going out to shop, tradesmen's boys delivering
victuals, young men in khaki, began to abound. Now and then a limping or
bandaged form would pass--some bit of human wreckage; and Mr. Bosengate
would think mechanically: 'Another of those poor devils! Wonder if we've
had his case before us!'

Running his car into the best hotel garage of the little town, he
made his way leisurely over to the court. It stood back from the
market-place, and was already lapped by a sea of persons having, as in
the outer ring at race meetings, an air of business at which one must
not be caught out, together with a soaked or flushed appearance. Mr.
Bosengate could not resist putting his handkerchief to his nose. He
had carefully drenched it with lavender water, and to this fact owed,
perhaps, his immunity from the post of foreman on the jury--for, say
what you will about the English, they have a deep instinct for affairs.

He found himself second in the front row of the jury box, and through
the odour of "Sanitas" gazed at the judge's face expressionless up
there, for all the world like a bewigged bust. His fellows in the box
had that appearance of falling between two classes characteristic of
jurymen. Mr. Bosengate was not impressed. On one side of him the foreman
sat, a prominent upholsterer, known in the town as "Gentleman Fox." His
dark and beautifully brushed and oiled hair and moustache, his radiant
linen