Lady Jim was witty, beautiful, chaste and brilliant--admirable qualities in a woman, but in a wife, unless informed with love, rather unattractive. Askew doubted if a composite mate of this glittering, unwarmed sort would satisfy his somewhat exacting requirements. Accepting too readily the world's definition, what he and it called love was actually selfishness, masquerading. He fancied, and with much reason, that Leah, openly devoted to herself, would not show devotion to him: that is, she being selfish, and he ditto, genuine happiness would not and could not spring from this union of like and like. Moreover, he ignorantly loved--in the world's sense--through his eyes, and with his lower nature; so it was probable that the legal possession of irresponsive beauty would pall. To limit a butterfly to one rose would bore the butterfly, and if the rose were sentient, she also might feel weary. In this way, and from surface feelings, argued Askew; but natural limitations prevented comprehension of the true reason which disinclined him to prosecute his now legal and therefore uninteresting wooing. He was a better man than he knew, and this he would have known, had he paid heed to the intimations of his higher self, when it occasionally overcame the lower. When the god within overtopped the brute, he had beheld not so clearly the body as the soul of Lola Fajardo, and had, for one swift moment, recognised that conjunction with the spirit would best promote his happiness. A genuine marriage must be spiritual, and it is the souls, whom God hath joined, which man is forbidden to put asunder. Askew's introspective self knew that his allotted wife on this physical plane was Lola, and that to her alone should love be given. But the lust of the eye demanded Leah Kaimes' beauty, and feigned a spurious passion to gain possession. Absence from Lady Jim made him aware that he did not actually love her, and a feeble struggle of the soul bound in chains of selfishness revealed that he would do well to seek Lola once more. Hence came the war between light and darkness, wherein the light so far triumphed that the young man sought Curzon Street with more self-control than was desirable in an admitted lover--one, be it known, of the worldly, material type only. And may all such, for the well-being of the race, be anathema maranatha! "I took you to be more original," said Leah, when he entered. "Original?" "To the extent of defying conventionality by calling before the funeral." "Your grief----" "Needed consolation. You declined to console." "I come now." "At the eleventh and less necessary hour. Besides----" She looked meaningly towards the window-seat, where a flushed and smiling Katinka adored with timid conversation and eloquent eyes a rather sour Demetrius. "Will you have a cup of tea?" "Thank you," and they moved towards the bamboo table, whence she had risen to whisper her greeting at the door.