Plato may have stopped dead in his conduct of other friendships, his philosophies may have frizzled hopelessly and helplessly, and have been evaporated to thin vapour before the fire of natural love. A thousand witnesses may rise to testify to the futility of friendship in two people of opposite sex, but there always is the “you” and the “me” in the world, who defies experience, and comes with sublime faith to show how different will be the result to that which has attended all previous experiments. As she told herself, if there had been the slightest spark of love in her bosom for this young man who had come into her life with some suddenness, and had gone out in a sense so violently, only to return in another guise, if there had been the veriest smouldering ember of the thing called love in her heart, she would have been jealous, just a little jealous, of the interests which drew him away from her every night, and often brought him home when the grey dawn was staining the blue of the East. She had watched him once from her window, and had wondered vaguely what he found to do at night. Was he seeking relaxation from an intolerable position? He never gave her the impression that it was intolerable. There was comfort in that thought. Was there--somebody else? Here was a question to make her knit her brows, this loveless wife. Once she found herself, to her intense amazement, on the verge of tears at the thought. She went through all the stages of doubt and decision, of anger and contrition, which a young wife more happily circumstanced might have experienced. Who was the violin player with the beautiful face? What part had she taken in Gilbert’s life? One thing she did know, her husband was gambling on the Stock Exchange. At first she did not realise that he could be so commonplace. She had always regarded him as a man to whom vulgar money-grabbing would be repugnant. He had surrendered his position at the Foreign Office; he was now engaged in some business which neither discussed. She thought many things, but until she discovered the contract note of a broker upon his desk, she had never suspected success on the Stock Exchange as the goal of his ambition. This transaction seemed an enormous one to her. There were tens of thousands of shares detailed upon the note. She knew very little about the Stock Exchange, except that there had been mornings when her mother had been unbearable as a result of her losses. Then it occurred to her, if he were in business--a vague term which meant anything--she might do something more than sit at home and direct his servants. She might help him also in another way. Business men have expedient dinners, give tactful theatre parties. And many men have succeeded because they have wives who are wise in their generation. It was a good thought. She held a grand review of her wardrobe, and posted the letter which so completely destroyed her mother’s peace of mind.