The "grand passion" (it is unfortunate that no single word in the English language exactly pictures that emotional process) was a little beyond Caroline Staley's philosophy. Yet within twelve hours of Aliette's interview with Hector, even Caroline Staley realized that "Miss Aliette was about through with that husband of hers." Lennard and the rest of the staff--though Caroline refused to gossip--were also aware, basement-wise, of the connubial position. In fact, at Lancaster Gate, only Mollie remained in ignorance. For, at the moment, Mollie Fullerford was far too absorbed to bother herself overlong about either sister or brother-in-law; a sublime selfishness held her aloof from both. The girl's mind was concentrated on Jimmy. It had become a point of honor with her not to think of anybody except Jimmy. Jimmy--for his own sake--must be neither "fascinated" nor "put off." He must be given his exact measure of attraction as of repulsion, his exact chance of finding out her faults as well as her virtues. Then, when he had definitely fallen in or out of love with the real her--_she_ would decide exactly how much she could love the real him. "Marriage," the girl said to herself, "is a pretty serious business. Jimmy and I mustn't make any mistake about it." Mollie Fullerford, you see, was of the modern young, who are trying, vainly, to avoid the troubles of their romantic and unreasoning elders--such troubles, for instance, as Hector's. Hector, reticent always, confided his troubles to nobody. He spent the first twelve hours after the quarrel in kicking himself for a fool and a savage who had nearly thrashed his wife; the next twelve in cursing himself for a fool and a softy who ought to have thrashed his wife--and the rest of the week fighting against the impulse to apologize. Meanwhile he was a stranger in his own house; excluded, as surely as though he had been a servant under notice, from domestic conversation. His wife had taken to breakfasting in bed (the rattle of the tray infuriated him every morning), and refused to get up till he had left the house: he, retorting in the only way open to him, dined at his clubs. On the one occasion when they did meet, her manners were beyond criticism--and her unattainable beauty a positive bar to any plans for sex-consolation. As a matter of psychological fact, both husband and wife were in a momentary state of complete sex-revulsion. Hector, thwarted of his one desire, seeing Aliette unobtainable as the only woman in the world; and Aliette--love's dream obscured by thought of love's material consequences--regarding herself, for the nonce, as the mere quarry of two males, a quarry anxious only to escape both pursuers.