In those early days in town, Cecily saw her husband very mercilessly. The scales had so completely dropped from her eyes that her clearness of vision startled even herself. There were times when, heightened by fierce jealousy, her old passion for him revived so strongly that she could scarcely restrain herself from the madness of throwing herself into his arms, appealing to him, begging him to come back to her--to love her. At such moments she always had the sensation of being held tight by some one who laughed, some one who said coldly, “You fool! When he’s hurrying to another woman, to whom, if you are lucky, he will speak of you ‘quite nicely.’” And when she had raged, and fought, and struggled till she had exhausted herself, she was always thankful for the iron arms that had held her, and the icy voice that had checked her passion. It was after the subsidence of such an outbreak of emotion, that she generally saw Robert dispassionately, as an outsider might have seen him, or rather with an amount of penetration which no outsider, however dispassionate, could have attained. She acquired an almost preternatural insight, a sort of projection of her mind into his, so that she actually witnessed his self-deception, saw the clouds which he purposely, yet almost without his own volition, raised between his own consciousness and naked truth. She realized, with something that was almost scornful amusement, how the idea of inviting Mayne, with all that such an invitation might imply, had first struck him. How he had thrust the thought from him as a poisonous snake,--and invited Mayne. She saw how, by this time, he had allowed himself to acquire merit by encouraging Mayne’s visit. His wife was unreasonable (because she didn’t know anything)--this, in his mind also, appeared in parenthesis, and was so lightly skimmed in thought that it scarcely counted. Besides, when she had expressed her wish for their practical separation, there _had_ been nothing, and that made all the difference, and brought him on happily to the contemplation of his own generosity in welcoming a friend of hers, at a time when she was not even aware that there was also a friend of _his_ for whom the same cordiality might be expected.