He had put it to her: “And if I marry the wrong one?” And she had said, That would be different. She couldn’t bear that. He remembered all this afterwards; but there was nothing in it to make him suppose, at the time, that she would take action. We talked it over, he and I, one night. “I suppose,” he said, “I shall have to marry again. It’s a physical necessity. But it won’t be anything more. I shan’t marry the sort of woman who’ll expect anything more. I won’t put another woman in Rosamund’s place. There’ll be no unfaithfulness about it.” And there wasn’t. Soon after that first year he married Pauline Silver. She was a daughter of old Justice Parker, who was a friend of Marston’s people. He hadn’t seen the girl till she came home from India after her divorce. Yes, there’d been a divorce. Silver had behaved very decently. He’d let her bring it against _him_, to save her. But there were some queer stories going about. They didn’t get round to Marston, because he was so mixed up with her people; and if they had he wouldn’t have believed them. He’d made up his mind he’d marry Pauline the first minute he’d seen her. She was handsome; the hard, black, white and vermilion kind, with a little aristocratic nose and a lascivious mouth. It was, as he had meant it to be, nothing but physical infatuation on both sides. No question of Pauline’s taking Rosamund’s place. Marston had a big case on at the time. They were in such a hurry that they couldn’t wait till it was over; and as it kept him in London they agreed to put off their honeymoon till the autumn, and he took her straight to his own house in Curzon Street. This, he admitted afterwards, was the part he hated. The Curzon Street house was associated with Rosamund; especially their bedroom—Rosamund’s bedroom—and his library. The library was the room Rosamund liked best, because it was his room. She had her place in the corner by the hearth, and they were always alone there together in the evenings when his work was done, and when it wasn’t done she would still sit with him, keeping quiet in her corner with a book. Luckily for Marston, at the first sight of the library Pauline took a dislike to it. I can hear her. “Br-rr-rh! There’s something beastly about this room, Edward. I can’t think how you can sit in it.” And Edward, a little caustic: “_You_ needn’t, if you don’t like it.” “I certainly shan’t.” She stood there—I can see her—on the hearthrug by Rosamund’s chair, looking uncommonly handsome and lascivious. He was going to take her in his arms and kiss her vermilion mouth, when, he said, something stopped him. Stopped him clean, as if it had risen up and stepped between them. He supposed it was the memory of Rosamund, vivid in the place that had been hers.