Two passions, to analyse a little further, except when he was at work, entirely possessed him, one his passion for Madge, of which not one jot, in spite of what had happened, was abated. It was not, nor ever had been, of the feverish or demonstrative sort, it did not flicker or flare, it burned steadily with a flame that was as essential a part of his life as breathing or the heart-beat. And the other, existing strangely and coincidently with it, was the passion of hate--hatred for her, hatred for Evelyn, a red flame which shed its light on all else, so that in the glare of it he hated the whole world. Two people only stood outside of it--his mother and Tom Merivale; for these he did not feel hate, but he no longer felt love; he was incapable of feeling that any longer except for Madge. But he did not object to them, he thought of them without resentment, but that was all. Then, as his nerves began to suffer under this daily torture, the hours of enforced idleness became full of alarm. What he feared he did not know, he only knew that he was apprehensive of some further blow that might be dealt him from a quarter as unexpected as that from which this had come. Everything had been so utterly serene when this bolt from the blue struck him, he could not have conjectured it; and now he could not conjecture what he expected next. But all this London did not know: it only knew that this very keen man of business was as acute as ever, to judge by the Metiekull episode, and began to reason that since he was so callous to what had happened, Madge had really not behaved so outrageously as had been supposed. She had found--this was the more human and kindly view induced by the cessation of the late London hours, and the substitution of a great deal of open air for the stifling ballroom of town--she had found that she really was in love with Mr. Dundas, and that Philip on closer acquaintance was what he had proved himself to be, business man first, lover afterwards. And really Mr. Dundas's pictures this year had been stupefyingly clever. They made one just gasp. Surely it would be silly to get somebody else to "do" one instead of him, just because Madge had found out her mistake in time, and he had assisted at the correction of it. He was certain to have heaps of orders in any case, so it would be just as well to be painted by him as soon as possible. Of course that implied that one accepted his marriage in a sort of way, but, after all, why not? Besides--here the world's tongue just tended to approach the cheek--it would be a kindness to old Lady Ellington to smooth things over as much as possible, and that dear little thing, Gladys, whom everybody liked so much, would be so pleased to find that Madge was not hardly thought of. Yes, quite so, and has the dressing-gong sounded already? And Tom killed a stag, and they had a good day among the grouse, and Jack killed a salmon, so there will be fish for dinner. What a blessing!