His manner of life had been, in almost every respect, the very opposite of hers. He had always had more money than he could use. He had always flung it about generously. He had never had to scrimp and save in his life, and self-denial was as absolutely unknown to him as the absence of the necessity for it was unknown to his wife. Whereby no doubt he had missed much, and had been to that extent docked of his full stature. He treated Hope with the greatest generosity, gave her everything he thought she could possibly want, which included very much which she did not want at all, and in every possible way showed her that the one desire of his heart was to win her completely, and so round their union into a perfect circle of happiness. In order to win her to his own ways, he found it advisable at times to go hand in hand with her along her chosen paths. And, bit by bit, for very love of her, he found himself going further than ever he had dreamed of going. For very love of her he found himself first tolerating, then enjoying, this new way of life because it was her way. Hers was the finer spirit, and by degrees he came to look through her eyes at matters which had lain under his nose all his life, but which he had never seen until his love for her quickened his understanding. She was a whole new world to him, a sweet apocalypse, and, by degrees, those things which had sufficed him before came to be as nothing and less than nothing to him. The change was very gradual, but it could not fail in time to attract the attention of those who sorely missed the jovial dispenser of largesse in Palma's former circles. His old friends chaffed him and laughed at him. He invited them to dinner and they fell under the spell of Madame Palma's beauty, to the extent, at all events, of swearing in marvellous language that Serge Palma was a mighty fortunate man. And if they still chaffed him at times, for his dereliction from their primrosy paths, his quiet smile turned all their shafts aside and even lodged them in their own bosoms. Not a man of them but would have done any mortal thing Madame Palma might have asked of him, however contrary to his natural inclination. But Hope had very soon taken their shallow measures, and not one of them did she find worth using in her great work. For that work, while patently and undeniably of the most harmless description, and with no end or aim beyond the uplifting of the helpless and downtrodden, was still work at which the authorities looked doubtfully, if not actually askance, and it needed for its furtherance large souls who could be at once energetic and cautious and discriminating.