For the first time he deliberately analyzed the motives that finally
ended in his proposal to her.

"Anything she does to me now serves me right!" was his final comment on
himself.

He laid aside any suggestion that she cared for him when she married
him; he knew she did not. In fact, it was her indifference to him, her
elusiveness, which had roused his senses--which had driven him to try to
reach her by clumsy physical means--but he had failed.

Jane said that she had met Christiansen at the pageant for the first
time, but was that the truth? Had he played some part in her life before
that? Was it probable that a man like Christiansen would have been
attracted solely by her performance of Salome--into such quick intimacy
as theirs? Suppose he, Jerry, had been used as a cat's-paw between them.
He flagellated himself for that suspicion. It was contemptible in the
light of what he knew of Jane.

Could poverty have driven Jane into marriage? She had lived for years
on what she made, apparently. She had no relatives, nor dependents.
Besides, he thought she would have disdained surrender, on those
grounds. It was a deeper reason than this, as she had said.

Worn out with his unusual self-scrutiny, he left the Park and went to
call on Mrs. Brendon. She was at home and welcomed him gaily. He
explained that Jane and the baby had deserted him and that he was a lone
bachelor in search of friends and comfort.

"Which means you're a wolf in sheep's clothing," she laughed.

"I feel like the sacrificial 'lamb,'" he replied, and marvelled that he
could talk so lightly.

"Well, there is nothing so good for husbands, I contend, as a dose of
absence. Men need unsettling, they get so rutty. Business, club, home,
ditto, ditto, ditto."

"I suppose it's also sauce for the goose?"

"Oh, yes. I hope Jane will get a beau and flirt with him abominably."

"Can you think of Jane flirting?"

"No, that's why I think she needs it. Jane takes life too seriously."

"It's rather a question about which is the better way to take it, don't
you think?"

"Life? Not a bit. Take it any way you like, but don't take it hard."

"I find I get a trifle bored with those of us who take it too lightly."

"That's a Janeism, Jerry."

He laughed at that. She ordered him home to dress and back for dinner,
and he accepted gratefully--glad of anything to kill time and keep his
mind off of his troubles.

He sat next Althea at dinner, and, for once,