He rose and passed out the room, leaving three very surprised clubmen behind him. But none of them could be more surprised than himself: surprised and relieved he was. He had been sickened at the idea of a woman being delivered up to the chatter of idle tongues, and in the violence of his distress had come by an absolute certainty that any dignified issue to his present affection could only come through an unprejudiced and unsentimental consideration of the whole facts. It was not going to be easy; but, dear God, he wanted something difficult, something really worth doing to counteract his misery. When he thought of himself and the ache at his heart he was blinded with tears and could see the facts only from one angle--his own. _Du bist wie eine Blume, So rein und schön und hold . . ._ Seen from that angle, Matilda was reduced in stature, distorted, ugly, mean. But he had loved her, loved her, and must still have the truth of her: more than ever before he needed to understand her. The beauty and delight and youth he had enjoyed in her must not go down in bitterness. One saying he took away with him from the club: "It wouldn't have been so bad if they'd cut and run." Perhaps, he thought to himself, they had "cut and run." And for him it became worse, to think that she had gone, without a word, with never a complaint, just gone. He remembered the night when she had said she was miserable, when he had found her in her bed, after the play, with her room in a litter. And he fell to thinking of the trials he must have put upon her, probing for all the possible offences, secret, subtle, unsuspected, of body and soul that might be laid at his door. There were many that he could think of, but his darkest hours came then when he perceived the fine balance, the perilous poise of married life, the imperceptible dovetailing of interests and habits and humors, the regions beyond perception where souls meet. Its nice complications were almost terrifying: at thousands of points men and women might fail, offend each other, crush each other, destroy, never dreaming of the cause, never, at the time, marking the effect. For such an adventure there need be heroism: to break, when even failure and offence and mutual exasperation bind, strength and courage superhuman or despairing. And men judge! And condemn! They measure this subtlest and most searching relationship with opinions and dull compromise and rules.