She had lived as a spinster for marriage and as a wife by marriage. Marriage was not a duty, but a state of beatitude, and she had walked in the faith of her grotesque illusion that her marriage was singularly blessed. It was childless, and the more blessed for that: there were no intruders on the perfect union of man and wife. It was illusion, and a wilder perversion of the truth than the ordinary self-deceiver can attain; but illusion is the breath of life, and she had fed on her deception till, like a drug-taker, she could not live without it. She had blazoned it abroad in a hundred drawing-rooms. If there were low-voiced colloquies of this or that affair, if it was hinted that men were faithless ever, Ada would grow superior and boast the flawless rectitude of Sam. These were things which happened to other people, who very likely deserved them, and could by no manner of means occur to her. She was not so sunk in imbecility as to deny that they did happen, and to people who were, nominally, married; but they were unsound people, insecurely married. There was a fundamental difference between their marriages and hers. She couldn’t explain; it was too obvious for explanation. She was married, and these others, somehow, were married, yet not married. They had, through lack of merit, stopped short of the seventh paradise where nothing could shake consummate bliss. They were not as she was. And now she had to face the fact that the impossible had happened to her, and not only had it happened, but was known to have happened. That was where the blow struck home. She had publicly elaborated her case of absolute conviction, she had vaunted his faithfulness, the cardinal connubiality of Sam, and Miss Entwistle was spreading the news that she had been a doting fool! And she hadn’t. She had not doted on Sam. She had not been infatuated with her husband, but with the idea of her husband which she had created and maintained. If only she had had the gumption to defy Miss Entwistle! If only she had concealed her belief in the story as successfully as she had hidden the fact that Sam had a separate room! She had been taken by surprise, she had admitted everything by default, and, worse, she had assured Mrs. Grandage that she would never see Sam again. She did not doubt, in spite of Mrs. Grandage’s good-nature, that this little sequel to the story of Miss Entwistle was in rapid circulation.