ng if the woman I loved was yourself, or merely my
idealization of you."

"I can't help it if I'm not the incarnation of all the virtues you
imagined me to be!" Olive sat down and played nervously with a
penholder, jabbing meaningless lines and dots on to a loose sheet of
paper.

"When I married you, I thought you were in sympathy with me over the big
things of life--the things that matter. But you turned them aside with a
laugh. That put a barrier between us."

"I never could stand prigs. I thought I was marrying a man of the
world."

"We seemed to be radically opposed in ideas. We drifted farther and
farther away from one another. At the end of five years, our marriage
was empty even of tepid affection. If there had been children,
perhaps...."

"No doubt you'd have wanted to wheel them out in the perambulator!"

Matheson let the flippancy pass. He continued steadily: "I felt I could
not do my big work under the constant friction of our married life, and
my life in the financial world. I felt you longed for complete liberty."

"I did, and I do so still."

"So, when opportunity came to me on the night of March 14th, I made the
sudden decision you know of. I thought I had cut myself loose. If it had
not been for that one unthought-of thread--Larssen's scheme to use me
dead or alive--I should never have come back.... My sudden decision was
wrong. I realise now that no man can cut himself utterly loose from the
life he has woven for himself. He is part of the pattern of the great
web of humanity. He is joined to the world around him by a thousand
threads. If he tries to cut loose, there will always be some one
unnoticed thread linking him to the old life."

"That sort of thing may be interesting to people who're interested in
it. It merely bores me."

"Olive, I want to say this: I'm ready to try once more. I'm ready to
take up our married life as we started it on our wedding day. I'll try
to forget the past and start afresh. I'll make allowances for you--will
_you_ make allowances for me?"

Olive laughed mirthlessly. "In plain words, that means you want me to be
somebody I've never pretended to be and never want to be. The idea is
fatuous."

"Won't you believe me when I say that I'm genuinely anxious to do the
right thing by you, and clear up the tangle I've made of your life and
mine? I'm sorry for what I said in Larssen's presence a little while
ago. I was angry and carried beyond myself."

"No apology