The interloper was established between Kingston and Gundred, and the purely formal nature of their marriage might have been clear even to themselves. They fell apart without wrench or difficulty, and on Gundred a heavy sense of loneliness settled like a cloud. She it was that suffered most from the separation, for she had not her husband’s compensations. All these years she had lived in the happiness of what she believed to be perfect intimacy with Kingston, sharing his hopes, his wishes, his thoughts; now, in a flash, she was made to guess that she had merely shared the outer aspects of his life, that the fancied beautiful completeness of their union was merely the band of tolerance strengthened through the long years by custom. Now that the elasticity of the tie that bound them was put to too great a stretch, it flew asunder, and, in the rebound, struck Gundred a stinging blow. It was not, of course, to be expected of her that she should realize the situation clearly, or face the true state of the case with any perspicacious candour. All she felt was felt dimly, instinctively, half-consciously; not even to herself would she admit what she felt, or analyze the solitude that seemed gathering round her. But very vaguely, in the introduction of Ivor Restormel, she understood that she herself must somehow have failed--could not be quite all to her husband that she had imagined herself, must at some point have fallen short of the perfect wife’s proper performance. This uncomfortable perception, which caught her in her tenderest spot, she made haste to burke and bury in the depths of her consciousness. But its ghost occasionally walked; and, though she did the best for herself by insisting daily on her husband’s unjustifiable cruelty and the blackness of the influences that had seduced him, yet she could never wholly escape that faint instinct of failure which was the one thing that her efficiency-worshipping nature most passionately dreaded.