Mackinnon, I believe, soon became tired of her. He liked her flattery, and at first declared that she was clever and nice, but her niceness was too purely celestial to satisfy his mundane tastes. Mackinnon himself can revel among the clouds in his own writings, and can leave us sometimes in doubt whether he ever means to come back to earth, but when his foot is on terra firma he loves to feel the earthy substratum which supports his weight. With women he likes a hand that can remain an unnecessary moment within his own, an eye that can glisten with the sparkle of champagne, a heart weak enough to make its owner’s arm tremble within his own beneath the moonlight gloom of the Colosseum arches. A dash of sentiment the while makes all these things the sweeter, but the sentiment alone will not suffice for him. Mrs. Talboys did, I believe, drink her glass of champagne, as do other ladies, but with her it had no such pleasing effect. It loosened only her tongue, but never her eyes. Her arm, I think, never trembled and her hand never lingered. The general was always safe, and happy perhaps in his solitary safety. It so happened that we had unfortunately among us two artists who had quarrelled with their wives. O’Brien, whom I have before mentioned, was one of them. In his case I believe him to have been almost as free from blame as a man can be whose marriage was in itself a fault. However, he had a wife in Ireland some ten years older than himself, and though he might sometimes almost forget the fact, his friends and neighbours were well aware of it. In the other case the whole fault probably was with the husband. He was an ill-tempered, bad-hearted man, clever enough, but without principle; and he was continually guilty of the great sin of speaking evil of the woman whose name he should have been anxious to protect. In both cases our friend, Mrs. Talboys, took a warm interest, and in each of them she sympathised with the present husband against the absent wife. Of the consolation which she offered in the latter instance we used to hear something from Mackinnon. He would repeat to his wife and to me and my wife the conversations which she had with him. “Poor Brown!” she would say; “I pity him with my very heart’s blood.” “You are aware that he has comforted himself in his desolation,” Mackinnon replied. “I know very well to what you allude. I think I may say that I am conversant with all the circumstances of this heart-blighting sacrifice.” Mrs. Talboys was apt to boast of the thorough confidence reposed in her by all those in whom she took an interest. “Yes, he has sought such comfort in another love as the hard cruel world would allow him.” “Or perhaps something more than that,” said Mackinnon. “He has a family here in Rome, you know; two little babies.”