Is she still faithful to him, he wonders. He knows what are the morals of the green-room--one intrigue after another. “And the people concerned,” he reminds himself, “are always the very last to hear anything.” He makes enquiries furtively about her especial friends. He finds himself listening in his club to the tedious reminiscences of obsolete tragedians. He asks chance acquaintances in the train whether they have ever heard of her. “That’s a wonderful discovery,” he says, “that new star at the Adelphi.” And he waits anxiously, in case the stranger may have some scandal to tell of her. He sees very little of her now. “But you cannot think how one thing comes on the top of another,” she explains. “All these people; its business half of it, and I am so happy. And you want me to be happy, don’t you, darling?” And every day he grows more jealous; every day the strain grows greater. Night after night she is supping and dancing, at other people’s expense; and in this world people don’t give anything for nothing, especially that type of person. There are times when he thinks he would give anything to be certain, to know one way or another. But there are others when he knows that that knowledge is the one thing which he would avoid. He is almost certain that there is something between her and that young barrister he saw her dining with last Sunday at the Berkeley. But he dare not make sure. He dare not be forced to break with her. For he knows that if he once broke with her he would have to say good-bye to love for ever. He knows that he has not the faith, nor the strength, to begin again. He has lived ten years in the last eighteen months, and ten years bring him very close to the prescribed limits of a life’s endurance. He can no longer say, as he could in the early forties, what is one love affair, is not the world companionably full of freehearted ladies? This is the last time, the very last. He has not the courage to say good-bye to pleasure. And then one evening the crested wave of jealousy is at its height. There is an all-night sitting at the House, and he is walking from his club to Westminster. It is just after eleven. The theatres are emptying into Piccadilly. The pavements are crowded. Along the streets cars and taxis are hurrying their occupants in search of further entertainment. He follows enviously the momentary view of bright interiors. He regrets the long hours that await him, on a hard bench, listening to dull speeches. He could wish that he were young again, forgetting in the evening’s intoxication the morning’s bills and overdrafts. And suddenly he catches in the corner of a taxi, lit suddenly by the glare of a street lamp, a glimpse of flaxen hair drawn back tight from a forehead, of hair bunching like clustering flowers about the ears, of pale blue cornflower eyes, and of lips so close against a man’s that they have just been kissed, or are about to kiss. A second and the taxi is again in shadow.