This was not the first time that Mr. Tregonell had shown the cloven foot during that prolonged honeymoon. He was not actually unkind to his wife. He indulged her fancies for the most part, even when they went counter to his; he would have loaded her with gifts, had she been willing to accept them; he was the kind of spouse who, in the estimation of the outside world, passes as a perfect husband--proud, fond, indulgent, lavish--just the kind of husband whom a sensuous, selfish woman would consider absolutely adorable from a practical standpoint; supplementing him, perhaps, with the ideal, in the person of a lover. So far, Christabel's wedded life had gone smoothly; for in the measure of her sacrifice she had included obedience and duty after marriage. Yet there was not an hour in which she did not feel the utter want of sympathy between her and the man she had married--not a day in which she did not discover his inability to understand her, to think as she thought, to see as she saw. Religion, conscience, honour--for all these husband and wife had a different standard. That which was right to one was wrong to the other. Their sense of the beautiful, their estimation of art, were as wide apart as earth and heaven. How could any union prove happy--how could there be even that smooth peacefulness which blesses some passionless unions--when the husband and wife were of so different a clay? Long as Leonard had known and loved his cousin, he was no more at home with her than he would have been with Undine, or with that ivory image which Aphrodite warmed into life at the prayer of Pygmalion the sculptor. More than once during these six weeks of matrimony Leonard had betrayed a jealous temper, which threatened evil in the future. His courtship had been one long struggle at self-repression. Marriage gave him back his liberty, and he used it on more than one occasion to sneer at his wife's former lover, or at her fidelity to a cancelled vow. Christabel had understood his meaning only too well; but she had heard him in a scornful silence which was more humiliating than any other form of reproof. After that offer of the opera, Mr. Tregonell lapsed into silence. His subjects for conversation were not widely varied, and his present position, aloof from all sporting pursuits, and poorly provided with the London papers, reduced him almost to dumbness. Just now he was silent from temper, and went on sulkily with his dinner, pretending to be absorbed by consideration of the wines and dishes, most of which he pronounced abominable. When he had finished his dinner, he took out his cigarette case, and went out on the balcony to smoke, leaving Christabel sitting alone at her little table.