ame of
bridge and show his teeth and talk the pleasant inanities of polite
society. All the stucco of civilization fell about him in slabs as he
made his way with long strides out of the Hosacks' place, across the
sandy road and on to the springy turf of the golf links. It didn't
matter where he went so long as he got elbow room for his indignation,
breathing space for his rage and a wide loneliness for his blasphemy....

He had stood humble and patient before this virginal girl. He had
confessed himself to her with the tremendous honesty of a man made
simple by an overwhelming love. She was married. So was he. But what
did that matter to either of them whose only laws were self-made? The
man to whom she was not even tied meant as little to her as the girl he
had foolishly married meant or would ever mean to him. He had placed
himself at her beck and call. In order to give her amusement he had
taken her to places in which he wouldn't have been seen dead, had
danced his good hours of sleep away for the pleasure of seeing her
pleased, had revolutionized his methods with women and paid her tribute
by the most scrupulous behavior and, finally, instead of setting out to
turn her head with pearls and diamonds and carry her by storm while she
was under the hypnotic influence of priceless glittering things for
bodily adornment, which render so many women easy to take, he had
recognized her as intelligent and paid her the compliment of treating
her as such, had stated his case and waited for the time when the blaze
of love would set her alight and bring her to his arms.

There was something more than mere egotism in all this,--the natural
egotism of a man of great wealth and good looks, who had walked through
life on a metaphorical red carpet pelted with flowers by adoring women
to whom even virtue was well lost in return for his attention. Joan,
like the spirit of spring, had come upon Palgrave at that time of his
life when youth had left him and he had stood at the great crossroads,
one leading down through a morass of self-indulgence to a hideous
senility, the other leading up over the stones of sacrifice and service
to a dignified usefulness. Her fresh young beauty and enthusiasm, her
golden virginity and unself-consciousness, her unaffected joy in being
alive, her superb health and vitality had shattered his conceit and
self-obsession, broken down his aloofness and lack of scruple and
filled the empty frame that he had hun