happily, growing
list of sad and incredible things.

The finality of the affair, according to Nina, was what had seemed to
her the most distressing--as though those two were already dead people.
She was unable to understand it. Could no glimmer of hope remain that,
in that magic "some day" of all young minds, the evil mystery might
dissolve? Could there be no living "happily ever after" in the wake of
such a storm? She had managed to hope for that, and believe in it.

Then, in some way, the news of Alixe's marriage to Ruthven filtered
through the family silence. She had gone straight to Nina, horrified,
unbelieving. And, when the long, tender, intimate interview was over,
another unhappy truth, very gently revealed, was added to the growing
list already learned by this young girl.

Then Selwyn came. She had already learned something of the world's
customs and manners before his advent; she had learned more since his
advent; and she was learning something else, too--to understand how
happily ignorant of many matters she had been, had better be, and had
best remain. And she harboured no malsane desire to know more than was
necessary, and every innocent instinct to preserve her ignorance intact
as long as the world permitted.

As for the man riding there at her side, his problem was simple enough
as he summed it up: to face the world, however it might chance to spin,
that small, ridiculous, haphazard world rattling like a rickety roulette
ball among the numbered nights and days where he had no longer any vital
stake at hazard--no longer any chance to win or lose.

This was an unstable state of mind, particularly as he had not yet
destroyed the photograph which he kept locked in his despatch box. He
had not returned it, either; it was too late by several months to do
that, but he was still fool enough to consider the idea at
moments--sometimes after a nursery romp with the children, or after a
good-night kiss from Drina on the lamp-lit landing, or when some
commonplace episode of the domesticity around him hurt him, cutting him
to the quick with its very simplicity, as when Nina's hand fell
naturally into Austin's on their way to "lean over" the children at
bedtime, or their frank absorption in conjugal discussion to his own
exclusion as he sat brooding by the embers in the library.

"I'm like a dead man at times," he said to himself; "nothing to expect
of a man who is done for; and worst of all, I no longer expect an