In the searchlight that was sweeping his horizon, he saw her transcendent faith in his equal greatness of soul; saw, too, his own ignoble narrowness of comprehension. He had been a fool, besotted by his own brutality. He lashed the ponies viciously. A man translates into external fury the shudder that a flash of self-knowledge sends through his soul. Yet the story he had heard was amazing; compelling credence, as Tertullian has it, _quia impossible_. All its elements were characterised by a marvellous intensity. What he had taken for a vulgar intrigue had really been a drama of fierce passions and noble heroisms, in which he alone had played a vulgar part. His gorge rose at the idea of the sorry figure he must have appeared in the eyes of each of the three. The ponies dashed, sweating and dusty, up to the front of the Villa Benedetta, before he realised how the journey had been accomplished. Mrs. Delamere, summoned in haste, descended to meet him. Seeing him alone and agitated, and the ponies dripping, she grew pale. “Where is Minna?” “She has twisted her ankle. Wouldn’t drive back with me. You are to send a closed landau for her at once. You will find her at the _Séjour du Soleil_, on the road before you get to Var.” “Aren’t you going back with the carriage?” “No,” he replied brusquely. “You send it. You needn’t be alarmed. She is not hurt.” “Then I suppose I may guess the reason----?” “You may guess anything you choose, Mrs. Delamere,” said Gerard. “Good evening.” And turning the ponies, he drove off. Half an hour later he was back in his hotel, where he spent the evening trying to face the situation. There was only one course open to him. Humiliation at Irene’s feet. It was but her due. And then? He was baffled. He would offer remarriage. Perhaps she would accept. After all, he had been her husband, she his wife. In his commonplace system of ethics, the fact counted for much. But Irene was different from other women. He had a dim conception of her as something spiritual and masterful. Had she been of commoner mould, perhaps he would not have chafed at his shackles. What a worm he had been! In his chastened mood, the meanness of his eager belief in her guilt smote him sorely. He had been a blackguard all through. Gradually, as the hours passed, the atmosphere of remorse grew denser, and through it, by a kind of spiritual refraction, the illusory image of the long set sun of love appeared above his horizon.