Bitterly hurt as I was, I could yet look at the matter from Fay's point of view. Annabel and I were dull old fogies, and the life that I had offered to my darling was not half full enough to satisfy her. In spite of all my struggles to adopt modern ideas, I was evidently still wrapped in the toils of the Victorian tradition that the warming of her husband's slippers is an occupation noble enough to satisfy the aspirations of any woman's soul. In my heart I had smiled at Annabel's antiquated ideas: but in Fay's young eyes my ideas were as antiquated as Annabel's.

Yet I would have given everything—even life itself—to make my darling happy: and therein lay the core of the tragedy. The good that I would do, I could not: I was too old.

I had done my best, and I had failed. What, then, was there left to live for?

I was so swallowed up in this engulfing wave of sick misery that I did not hear the door open or any one enter the room. But I was roused from the stupor of despair into which I had fallen by feeling a pair of soft arms clinging round my neck, and a soft cheek pressed against my own; whilst the voice that made the music of my life said in a trembling whisper: "I'm so awfully sorry, Reggie, for being such a beast. Do forgive me, and I'll never be such a brute again."

So I was raised by a touch from the Slough of Despair to the Summit of the Delectable Mountains.

CHAPTER XVI
A SORROWFUL SPRINGTIME

It goes without saying that I forgave my darling, for the good reason that I had nothing to forgive. That part of the business was easy enough. It also goes without saying that Fay got her own way about the proposed trip to the South of France: but that part of the business was by no means easy.

Annabel was greatly surprised when I broke it to her that Fay did not wish to go abroad. But she was more than surprised, she was indignant, when she discovered that I intended to let my wife do as she pleased in the matter. If Fay did not want to go to France, to France she should not go: that I said and that I stuck to.

But the sticking was hard work.