"It'll be safe enough for me," he answered grimly. "Don't sit up for me; and look after the baby." He smiled at her kindly, then came and patted her hand for a moment. "Yes, it would be hard to pick up a life that's once broken, I expect," he said. She looked up at him with a sudden apprehension in her eyes. His manner was strangely quiet; he seemed to her gentler. "There, I mean nothing but what I say," he told her soothingly. "I must go and get ready for my ride." "But, Mr. Imason, you'll take something to eat first?" "I can't eat." He laughed a little. "I should like to drink, but I won't. Good night, Mrs. Mumple." Ten minutes later he was walking his horse down the hill to Milldean, on his way to Fairhaven. But he had little thought of Mrs. Valentine; he had no belief in that story at all. It served a purpose, but not the purpose for which it had been meant. What it did was to remove the last of his doubts. Now he knew that Christine's suggestion was true. He was going to Fairhaven not to find Sibylla at Mrs. Valentine's, but to seek Sibylla and Blake he knew not where. He thought not much of Sibylla. He had taught himself to consider his wife incalculable--a prey to disordered whims, swept on by erratic impulses. This whim was more extraordinary, more disorderly, more erratic than any of the others; but it was of the same nature with them, the same kind of thing that she had done when she determined to hold herself aloof from him. This blow had fallen entirely and utterly unforeseen, but he acknowledged grimly that it had not been unforeseeable. He thought even less of young Blake, and thought of him without much conscious anger. The case there was a very plain one. He had known young Blake in the days when aspirations did not exist, and when the desire to be good was no part of his life. He took him as he had known him then, and the case was very simple. Whatever an attractive woman will give, men like Blake will take, recking of nothing, forecasting nothing, careless of themselves, merciless to her whom they are by way of loving. In regard to Blake the thing had nothing strange in it. Here too it was unexpected, but again by no means unforeseeable.