For the first few days Virginia said nothing of her meeting with Gerald in her letters to Gaunt. This was not because she wished to hide them, but because she habitually mentioned only such points as seemed essential--Pansy's progress and her own expenditure. Tony's expenses, her mother's club dinners and theatres, came out of her own private allowance. It was wonderful how far a pound could be made to go in museums and picture palaces for Tony's benefit. After a few days, however, she thought it better to mention what was going on, lest her husband should think there might be something clandestine about it. She wrote accordingly, in answer to his demand for an account of her own health: _I have been feeling very much better lately, for Mr. Rosenberg--whom I met last week in the street, and who told me he had been to Perley Hatch, and had seen you--has been taking mother and me for drives in the evening. His people are out of town, and he has the car to himself. We have been to Windsor and Burnham Beeches, to Virginia Water, and all sorts of places. The air does me a great deal of good. I am really quite well now._ Gaunt read it grimly. He told himself that he might have expected it. Was it likely that Rosenberg would leave her alone, having learned that she was in London without him? The test was growing more acute, the shadowy tie, which bound her to him, more attenuated. She would never come back. He went into the little sitting-room, wherein the decorators were at work, and wondered at his own folly. He was carrying that folly to an absurd pitch. He was having a copy executed of the statue of Love from the Wallace collection. It was to stand upon a column in the charming semicircular bay window, looking out upon the prim terrace garden. Should he write now--write and offer her her release? He sneered at himself for having ascertained the limits of his own penitence. Although he was ready to swear that he would do anything for her happiness, he could not do that. Having once seen her, at his table, on the terrace, in the hall, having heard her voice in the stark silence of his desolate house, the craving to have her back was, he had to confess, even greater than the craving for her content. Besides, he argued, she had been willing once. She had accepted her destiny, had meant to do her duty, spoken of being bound by her vows. When she found that there was love--even adoration--to be lavished upon her, would she not become reconciled? Ah! the time for that had gone by. Rosenberg had now stepped into the picture. She knew nothing of his own change of heart. To her he was a gloomy and cruel tyrant. Had he used his chance when wonderfully he had obtained it--had he not horrified her at the outset by his unmanly, despicable behaviour--what might not have been possible? Thoughts such as these were his torment day and night; and his sleep went from him. * * * * *