out of the way. He became unscrupulous. So when he
had required money he threw over his first love who, he knew, adored
him; now when he found out the mistake and was seriously in love with
Bertha, he would have thrown over anything on earth to get her, and
admired himself for doing it. He thought himself now noble-spirited and
sporting. He would have run away with her at any moment, even if he
thought they would have two or three hundred a year to live on, or
nothing at all. Not only that, he would have been devoted to her and
worshipped her and never reproached her--and been faithful to her
too--until he fell in love with someone else, which might, or might not
have happened.

Often he wondered why he cared so much more for Bertha now that she was
twenty-eight than when she was eighteen. Perhaps she had really
increased in charm: certainly she had in magnetism and in knowledge of
the world, and she was just as attractive, a sweet little creature whom
one wanted to protect and yet whom, in a way, one could lean on and rely
on, too. She was so subtle, so strangely wise and sensible--she seemed
to know everything while having the naive, unconscious air of a person
who knows next to nothing. And all these gifts she used--for what? She
made Percy happy, she was charming and kind, clear-sighted, indulgent
(if a little cynical), and always amusing; full of dash and spirit, and
yet with the most feminine softness, and above all that invaluable
instinct, always, for doing and saying the right thing ... and (he knew
instinctively) a genius for love. ...

Yes, he thought, she was an extraordinary woman! There was nobody
like her: in his opinion she was thrown away on Percy. But _she_
did not think so, and he envied, hated the husband, with an absurd
bitterness--envied him for several reasons, but chiefly because Nigel
had now developed what had been in abeyance at the time of their
youthful engagement--that real sensuous discrimination, which has
comparatively little to do with taste for beauty, that power of
weighing amorous values, given only to the authentic Sybarite.

* * * * *

On the day arranged for the Russian Ballet party, Nigel made an excuse
for seeing Bertha to arrange tactics with regard to Rupert and Madeline.
She told him she was expecting the Futurist painter, the Italian,
Semolini, but she received him first.

"About Rupert, now," said Nigel. "Isn't it odd?--I always think of