None the less, he went on, guiltless as he held himself to be, he could not keep at bay the suspicion, the reflection, that a man is not deserted by his wife without some reason. What it could be passed his comprehension, but he had the gnawing fear that it existed. Could I offer any suggestion? I had known Rose longer than anyone else, even though she was an immature girl when she left me. I said that there must of course be some reason. Was it not possible—women are strange creatures—that Rose needed something more than a good home, a circle of London friends none of whom had she known before marriage, unintermittent courtesy from her husband? “Women are not like us,” I went on: “women are capricious—it is a commonplace of the dramatists and novelists, who are supposed to know—look at Shakespeare, Browning, Hardy, every one—they are capricious, incalculable, they have odd whimsies, desires—every doctor can tell you about them—they take sudden dislikes. In short,” I said, “they are women.” He agreed heartily. Some women, I continued, even actually appreciate a little bullying, a little roughness; some must be continually re-wooed, taken on new honeymoons. The greatest mistake in marriage can be the limitation of honeymoons to one. As for Rose—he must remember that she was born and bred in the country: her early days had been spent in gardens; perhaps she was spoiling for the open air again. Oh, yes, I knew that Wilton Place was near the Park; but I meant something more open than that. She had a touch of the woods in her: something of the dryad, even the naiad. Surely he had noticed that? No, he had not. I was thinking of her, doubtless, as a child, and he had known her as a woman and a mother. I must remember that. Nor could he quite agree that I had in the least accounted for anything more than a sudden wish for a holiday in the country. I had said nothing yet to explain her physical treachery—her infidelity. “There,” said I, “I have no theory to propound.” Nor had I. I would not have propounded it for the world. In that case, he said, he must fall back on what was at once the kindest and the most plausible theory—that Rose had lost her reason. Yes, that was it. Her mental balance was disturbed, and in her derangement he had become antipathetic to her, the author even of some imagined inconstancy; and in her nervous, unhinged condition she reverted, perhaps subconsciously, to her youthful days, and, thinking herself again the playmate of this boy, this soldier, she had automatically, as it were, resumed friendship with him, and he had been base enough to take advantage of her distraught state and had carried her off. That, he felt sure, was the explanation; yes, that was it. He fell into a long silence, but I had no hope. He had now, I could see, given up all idea of his nocturnal walk. Nor could any movement of my own—adjusting the shutters, moving ashtrays, and so forth—deflect his thoughts.