I shall never forget the day I changed my plans suddenly, deciding I wouldn't go to New York that week after all, although my bag was packed and Smithers already at the station with it. The instantaneous look of disappointment which leaped across your face, and which for some seconds you didn't sufficiently realize to conceal--what a vista that look opened out to me--a hellish vista! And your constrained little smile--a sort of conscious visible movement of the muscles about your mouth--"on purpose"--came too late. That first look had been like a Roentgen ray over the last six months of our life--lives I should say, for while you and I were living one life, you at the same time, without me, were living another. Then I understood this summer's comfortable weekly good-byes, so different from other years! I think, down in the bottom of my heart, I understood _all_ at _that moment_,--though I wouldn't acknowledge it not even in secret to myself, and even when, before another twenty-four hours had passed, my eyes were damnable witnesses against you. I couldn't believe them, and doubt if I would have if you had not confessed. Of course, I knew whenever we had guests Jack Tolby was always one of them, and also one of the guests wherever we went, but it only seemed natural. He was extremely agreeable in our house; it's only now I realize he has always rather avoided me at the club. I suppose even men like him have some sort of conscience, or at least a sense of decency, if not of honor, toward their own friends, and, if so, good God, how ashamed he must have been every time he had to take my hand! And _you_, when you received my lips on yours, already satiated with kisses in my absence! Ugh! Kate! Kate! how I hate you! Yes, hate is the word. And to think _you_ are the mother of my children! That is the _big_ hurt.