"My good fellow, I ask no more than is asked and expected of a hundred 'society' husbands to-day. Consider!--your wife has been led away from her soberer judgment and reasoning by an exalted and hysterical passion for me on account of my looks,--not for myself at all--because she really does not know _Me_,--she only sees me as I appear to be. The love of handsome exterior personalities is a common delusion of the fair sex--and passes in time like other women's diseases. No actual dishonour or disgrace attaches to her or to you,--nothing has been seen, heard, or done, _in public_. This being so, I can't understand what you are making a fuss about. The great object of social life, you know, is to hide all savage passions and domestic differences from the gaze of the vulgar crowd. You can be as bad as you like in private--only God sees--and that does not matter!" His eyes had a mocking lustre in them,--twanging his mandoline, he sang under his breath, "If she be not fair for me What care I how fair she be!" "That is the true spirit, Geoffrey,"--he went on--"It sounds flippant to you no doubt in your present tragic frame of mind,--but it is the only way to treat women, in marriage or out of it. Before the world and society, your wife is like Cæsar's, above suspicion. Only you and I (we will leave God out) have been the witnesses of her attack of hysteria ..." "Hysteria, you call it! She loves you!" I said hotly--"And she has always loved you. She confessed it,--and you admitted that you always knew it!" "I always knew she was hysterical--yes--if that is what you mean;"--he answered--"The majority of women have no real feelings, no serious emotions--except one--vanity. They do not know what a great love means,--their chief desire is for conquest,--and failing in this, they run up the gamut of baffled passion to the pitch of frenetic hysteria, which with some becomes chronic. Lady Sibyl suffers in this way. Now listen to me. I will go off to Paris or Moscow or Berlin at once,--after what has happened, of course I cannot stay here,--and I give you my word I will not intrude myself into your domestic circle again. In a few days you will tide over this rupture, and learn the wisdom of supporting the differences that occur in matrimony, with composure----" "Impossible! I will not part with you!" I said vehemently--"Nor will I live with her! Better the companionship of a true friend than that of a false wife!" He raised his eyebrows with a puzzled half humorous expression--then shrugged his shoulders, as one who gives up a difficult argument. Rising, he put aside his mandoline and came over to me, his tall imposing figure casting a gigantic shadow in the brilliant moonbeams.