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“It’s a childish fancy, a survival of the primitive savage, if you like; but from that hour to this I’ve hankered day and night for a chance to retrieve myself, to set myself right with the man I meant to be. I want to prove to that man that it was all an accident–an unaccountable deviation from my normal instincts; that having once been a coward doesn’t mean that a man’s cowardly… and I can’t, I can’t!”

Mr. Carstyle’s tone had passed insensibly from agitation to irony. He had got back to his usual objective stand-point.

“Why, I’m a perfect olive-branch,” he concluded, with his dry indulgent laugh; “the very babies stop crying at my approach–I carry a sort of millennium about with me–I’d make my fortune as an agent of the Peace Society. I shall go to the grave leaving that other man unconvinced!”

Vibart walked back with him to Millbrook. On her doorstep they met Mrs. Carstyle, flushed and feathered, with a card-case and dusty boots.

“I don’t ask you in,” she said plaintively, to Vibart, “because I can’t answer for the food this evening. My maid-of-all-work tells me that she’s going to a ball–which is more than I’ve done in years! And besides, it would be cruel to ask you to spend such a hot evening in our stuffy little house–the air is so much cooler at Mrs. Vance’s. Remember me to Mrs. Vance, please, and tell her how sorry I am that I can no longer include her in my round of visits. When I had my carriage I saw the people I liked, but now that I have to walk, my social opportunities are more limited. I was not obliged to do my visiting on foot when I was younger, and my doctor tells me that to persons accustomed to a carriage no exercise is more injurious than walking.”

She glanced at her husband with a smile of unforgiving sweetness.

“Fortunately,” she concluded, “it agrees with Mr. Carstyle.”