f chocolates, remember, I might have felt that I must
make you some sort of a formal reply. But as it is, I shall tell you
the truth. My wife is not coming hack."

"Not at all?" she exclaimed.

"To me, never," he answered. "We have separated."

"I am so very sorry," she said, after a moment's startled silence. "I
am afraid that I asked a tactless question, but how could I know?"

"There was nothing tactless about it," he assured her. "It makes it
much easier for me to tell you. I married my wife thirteen years ago
because I believed that her wealth would help me in my career. She
married me because she was an American with ambitions, anxious to find a
definite place in English society. She has been disappointed in me.
Other circumstances have now presented themselves. I have discovered
that my wife's affections are bestowed elsewhere. To be perfectly
honest, the discovery was a relief to me."

"So that is why you are living down here like this?" she murmured.

"Precisely! The one thing for which I am grateful," he went on, "is
that I always refused to let my wife take a big country house. I
insisted upon an unpretentious place for the times when I could rest. I
think that I shall settle down here altogether. I can just afford to
live here if I shoot plenty of rabbits, and if Robert's rheumatism is
not too bad for him to look after the vegetable garden."

"Of course you are talking nonsense," she pronounced, a little curtly.

"Why nonsense?"

"You must go back to your work," she insisted.

"Keep this place for your holiday moments, certainly, but for the rest,
to talk of settling down here is simply wicked."

"What is my work?" he asked. "I tell you frankly that I do not know
where I belong. A very intelligent constituency, stuffed up to the
throat with schoolboard education, has determined that it would prefer a
representative who has changed his politics already four times. I seem
to be nobody's man. Horlock at heart is frightened of me, because he is
convinced that I am not sound, and he has only tried to make use of me
as a sop to democracy. The Whigs hate me like poison, hate me even
worse than Horlock. If I were in Parliament, I should not know which
Party to support. I think I shall devote my time to roses."

"And between September and May?"

"I shall hibernate and think about them."

"Of course," she said, with the air of one humoring a child, "you are
not in earnest. You have just been through a