Until the day before the party at the mines he had been content to drift, but a certain moment down in his own mine had given a new and abrupt turn to both thoughts and purpose. Ida might have spared herself her agonies of shame: she had not betrayed her love, but she had given him a distinct impression that she was employing her redoubtable feminine weapons to reduce him to his old allegiance. He had remembered for a poignant moment that he once had loved this woman to distraction, and during that moment he saw her again as the most beautiful and distracting of her sex. His brief surrender had filled him with fury. He had no intention of despising himself. From boyhood up he had had nothing but contempt for the man that did not know his own mind. If it had not been for this serene confidence in himself, he, who was constitutionally wary in spite of the secret and wistful springs of romance in his nature and the apparent suddenness of his bold plunges, never would have married Ida Hook, nor any woman, until he had sounded her thoroughly. But he had behaved like any hot-headed and conceited young fool, and, much as he now admired Ida, it both infuriated him and appalled him to feel even for a moment toward her as he had in his raw inexperienced youth. He therefore made up his mind to go to her like a rational being and ask her to give him his freedom. They had made a mistake. They were reasonable members of an advanced civilisation, where mistakes were recognised and rectified whenever possible. He did not doubt for a moment that reason and logic must appeal as forcibly to a woman as to himself. The door of his wife’s house was opened after the usual delay, and the maid told him that Mrs. Compton was upstairs in the billiard room “or somewheres.” He took the stairs three steps at a time lest his courage evaporate; but drew a long breath of relief when he entered the large square hall and saw nothing of Ida. He would have rung for the maid, but reflected that no doubt he had already provided enough gossip for the republic below stairs without admitting that he did not know his way round his wife’s house. He was about to knock on each door in turn when he noticed that one in a corner at the end of the hall was open and that it led into a narrow passageway. Beyond there was light, possibly in one of those boudoirs of which he had heard. Mrs. Murphy would have been sure to have a boudoir, and no doubt Ida, little disposed as she was to indolence, spent some part of her mornings in it.