So that was it, was it? He had been relegated to the hangers-on, reduced to the ranks, put into the position of any one of the number of extraneous men who hung round this girl-child for a smile and a word! That was the way he was to be treated, he, Gilbert Palgrave, the connoisseur, the decorative and hitherto indifferent man who had refused to be subjected to any form of discipline, who had never, until Joan had come into his life, allowed any one to put him a single inch out of his way, who had been triumphantly one-eyed and selfish,--that was the way he was to be treated by the very girl who had fulfilled his once wistful hope of making him stand, eager and startled and love-sick among the chaos of individualism and indolence, who had shaken him into the Great Emotion! Yes, by God, he'd know about that. Bare-headed and surging with untranslatable anger he started walking. He was in no mood to go into the drawing-room and cut into a game of bridge and show his teeth and talk the pleasant inanities of polite society. All the stucco of civilization fell about him in slabs as he made his way with long strides out of the Hosacks' place, across the sandy road and on to the springy turf of the golf links. It didn't matter where he went so long as he got elbow room for his indignation, breathing space for his rage and a wide loneliness for his blasphemy.... He had stood humble and patient before this virginal girl. He had confessed himself to her with the tremendous honesty of a man made simple by an overwhelming love. She was married. So was he. But what did that matter to either of them whose only laws were self-made? The man to whom she was not even tied meant as little to her as the girl he had foolishly married meant or would ever mean to him. He had placed himself at her beck and call. In order to give her amusement he had taken her to places in which he wouldn't have been seen dead, had danced his good hours of sleep away for the pleasure of seeing her pleased, had revolutionized his methods with women and paid her tribute by the most scrupulous behavior and, finally, instead of setting out to turn her head with pearls and diamonds and carry her by storm while she was under the hypnotic influence of priceless glittering things for bodily adornment, which render so many women easy to take, he had recognized her as intelligent and paid her the compliment of treating her as such, had stated his case and waited for the time when the blaze of love would set her alight and bring her to his arms.