but I couldn't
help it. What a dreadful fate for a clever man! To fail in life
completely, and then to be thrown back on a family like that!"

"Maud is a snob and a Philistine. But, in her case, something emerges."

She glanced at him, but proceeded in her suavest tones, "Do let us make
one great united attempt to get Mr. Ansell to Sawston."

"No."

"What a changeable friend you are! When we were engaged you were always
talking about him."

"Would you finish your tea, and then we will buy the linoleum for the
cubicles."

But she returned to the subject again, not only on that day but
throughout the term. Could nothing be done for poor Mr. Ansell? It
seemed that she could not rest until all that he had once held dear was
humiliated. In this she strayed outside her nature: she was unpractical.
And those who stray outside their nature invite disaster. Rickie, goaded
by her, wrote to his friend again. The letter was in all ways unlike
his old self. Ansell did not answer it. But he did write to Mr. Jackson,
with whom he was not acquainted.

"Dear Mr. Jackson,--

"I understand from Widdrington that you have a large house. I would like
to tell you how convenient it would be for me to come and stop in it.
June suits me best.--

"Yours truly,

"Stewart Ansell"

To which Mr. Jackson replied that not only in June but during the whole
year his house was at the disposal of Mr. Ansell and of any one who
resembled him.

But Agnes continued her life, cheerfully beating time. She, too, knew
that her marriage was a failure, and in her spare moments regretted
it. She wished that her husband was handsomer, more successful, more
dictatorial. But she would think, "No, no; one mustn't grumble. It can't
be helped." Ansell was wrong in sup-posing she might ever leave Rickie.
Spiritual apathy prevented her. Nor would she ever be tempted by a
jollier man. Here criticism would willingly alter its tone. For Agnes
also has her tragedy. She belonged to the type--not necessarily an
elevated one--that loves once and once only. Her love for Gerald had
not been a noble passion: no imagination transfigured it. But such as it
was, it sprang to embrace him, and he carried it away with him when he
died. Les amours gui suivrent sont moins involuntaires: by an effort of
the will she had warmed herself for Rickie.

She is not conscious of her tragedy, and therefore only the gods need
weep at it. But it is fair to remember that hitherto she