eeking communion with hers.

He thanked her at parting; the slight hush and mystery of his manner
intimated that she had found a way.

"I hope," she said, "you'll come often--often."

"May we? May we?" He seemed to leap at it--as if they hadn't come
often enough before!

Certainly she had found the way--the way to deliver him, the way to
pacify his wife, to remove her gently to her place and keep her
there.

The dreadful lady thus creditably disposed of, Wilkinson was no
longer backward in the courting of his opportunity. He proved
punctual to the first minute of the golden hour.

Hampstead was immensely interested in his blossoming forth. It found
a touching simplicity in the way he lent himself to the sympathetic
eye. All the world was at liberty to observe his intimacy with Mrs.
Norman.

It endured for nine weeks. Then suddenly, to Mrs. Norman's
bewilderment, it ceased. The Wilkinsons left off coming to her
Friday evenings. They refused her invitations. Their behavior was so
abrupt and so mysterious that Mrs. Norman felt that something must
have happened to account for it. Somebody, she had no doubt, had
been talking. She was much annoyed with Wilkinson in consequence,
and, when she met him accidentally in the High Street, her manner
conveyed to him her just resentment.

He called in Fitzjohn's Avenue the next Sunday. For the first time
he was without his wife.

He was so downcast, and so penitent, and so ashamed of himself that
Mrs. Norman met him halfway with a little rush of affection.

"Why have you not been to see us all this time?" she said.

He looked at her unsteadily; his whole manner betrayed an extreme
embarrassment.

"I've come," he said, "on purpose to explain. You mustn't think I
don't appreciate your kindness, but the fact is my poor wife"--(She
knew that woman was at the bottom of it!)--"is no longer--up to it."

"What is the wretch up to, I should like to know?" thought Mrs.
Norman.

He held her with his melancholy, unsteady eyes. He seemed to be
endeavoring to approach a subject intimately and yet abstrusely
painful.

"She finds the music--just at present--a little too much for her;
the vibrations, you know. It's extraordinary how they affect her.
She feels them--most unpleasantly--just here." Wilkinson laid two
delicate fingers on the middle buttons of his waistcoat.

Mrs. Norman was very kind to him. He was not very expert, poor
fellow, in the fabrication of excuses. His loo