He was loftily forgiving when Jessie returned, and she was softly, cushionly submissive. For the first time--love being dead--she let loose upon him the full force of her sex. He was still sensitive enough to feel repelled, even as he yielded. Their house was filled with stealthy shadows. It grew darker and darker. Each sought to illuminate it with lies, lies, and yet more lies. At first, as usual, his lies gave him the illusion of greater freedom, and he heightened the illusion by treating Jessie with less and less consideration. He gulped down the forced admiration she gave him and was always trying to squeeze more of it out of her. When he was in a mood of self-abasement she admired the loftiness which could stoop to acknowledge its defects, and quickly he was riding off again with his head full of himself as the kindest of husbands, the best of sons, the most irresistibly successful of men. Such glaring divergence presented itself to his mind as consistency. Such a state of things imposed a heavy strain upon Jessie. She was not always quick enough to follow him in his snipe-like flights. Sometimes when he was accusing himself of neglect and thoughtlessness and lack of consideration for her, it seemed to her that it would be easiest and might afford both of them relief if she agreed with him. Then his vanity writhed and furiously he would cry: "You are always finding fault with me. . . My mother thinks me perfect." It is impossible to be wise where love is not, and Jessie could not learn discretion. He was so extraordinarily convincing in his self-reproach that she always forgot the lessons of caution she had set herself in his absence. Still he would force endearing phrases upon her and caresses and demand to be told that she loved him. Her parrot-cries appeased him, and, feeling confident that she loved him, in stealthy small ways he began to betray her, indeed, where before he had only dared to be false to her in thought. He absented himself from his house to seek the company of flattering fools. He returned at longer and longer intervals to stoke up the furnace of his wife's love. . . . He was like a child who, having built a house of cards, removes first one card and then another from the base and leaves only enough to keep the edifice ominously swaying. * * *