their lives had blown her desire to return to the theater into the air. She was fully occupied with dressing, buying clothes, ever more clothes, and arranging for the hospitality they received and gave. Her husband was amazed at the change in her. It was as startling as the swift growth of a floundering puppy into a recognizable dog. It was not merely a matter of pinning on clothes and opinions and a set of fashionable ideas: there was real growth in the woman which enabled her to wear these gewgaws with ease and grace so that they became her and were an ornament, absurd it is true, but so generally worn--though rarely with such tact--that their preposterousness was never noticed in the crowd. She was gayer and easier, and she seemed to have lost the tug and strain at her heart. Often in the daytime she was dull and listless, but she never failed to draw upon some mysterious reserve of vitality for the evening. He was sometimes alarmed when he watched the other women who had not her freshness, and saw how some of them had ceased to be anything but views and opinions and clothes. But he told himself that she was not tied, as the rest were, by their husband's professions, to London, and that they could always go away when they were tired of it. . . . He was often bored and exhausted, but he put up with it all, partly because of the pleasure she was finding in that society, and partly because he felt that he was getting nearer that indeterminate but magnetically irresistible goal which had been set before him on--when was it?--on the night when his thoughts had taken form and life and he had been launched into that waking dreamland. With that, even the most violent happenings seemed to have very little to do; they were almost purely external. One might have a startling adventure every day, and be no nearer the goal. One might have so many adventures that his capacity to enjoy them would be exhausted. There was, he felt sure, as he pondered the existence of these professional people and saw how many of them were jaded by habit, but were carried on by the impetus of the habits of their kind, so that they were forever seeking to crowd into their days and nights far more people, thoughts, ideas, books, æsthetic emotions than they would hold--there was somewhere in experience a point at which living overflowed into life and was therein justified. So much seemed clear, and it was that point that he was seeking. In his relationship with Matilda, in his love for her, he had striven to force his way to it. The violence of his meeting with her, the brutality of his breach with his old existence, had, by reflex action, led him to violence and brutality even in his kindness, even in his attempted sympathy.