What ages ago--those tranquil days in which they had driven together in the summer afternoons--not the dull circuit of the Park, but to Hampton Court, or Wimbledon, or Richmond, or Esher, escaping from the suburban flower-gardens to green fields and rural commons, glimpses of woodland even, in the country about Claremont. Their airings were no swift rushes in thirty horse-power car, but a leisurely progress behind a pair of priceless horses, with time for seeing wild roses and honeysuckle in the hedges, the dogs and children on rustic paths, and the peace of cottage gardens. She remembered how those tranquil afternoons had become impossible, by reason of her perpetual engagements; and how quietly Mario Provana had submitted to the change in her way of life, the succession of futile pleasures, the hurry and excitement. "I want you to be happy," he told her, when she made a feeble apology for not having an afternoon at his service. "You are young, and you must enjoy your youth. Things that seem trivial and joyless to me are new and sweet to you. Be happy, love. I have plenty of use for my time." That was in the beginning of their drifting apart. Looking back to-night she could but wonder as she remembered how gradually, how imperceptibly that drifting apart had gone on; until she awoke one day to find that she and her husband were estranged. He was kind, had only an indulgent smile for the folly of her life, but the happy union of their first wedded years was over and done with. In Lady Susan's brief phrase, "They had become like other people." And now she and Claude Rutherford had drifted apart, and were like other people. The reunion of a few weeks at Disbrowe was but a flash of summer across the gathering gloom of their lives. "He can be happy," she thought, brooding in the night silence. "He cares for so many things. I care for nothing but the things that are gone."