Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II: NIGEL SINCLAIR OFTEN during the two days she stopped in her work â??it was not physically strenuousâ??and fidgetted. At such times a small perpendicular crease came into her naturally open brow, and her eyes darkened. She did not become flustered or aggrieved. But she was a little resentful. It seemed so hard that Howard could not yet stay his fancies, because in the old days she had filled his life with such ardent love that any lighter feeling, coming now, after so many episodes of a peculiar nature, was a betrayal of persistent animal stupidity. He had learnt nothing. He never would learn anything. He was incorrigible; and however charming perversity may be in the young it grows indecent with the attainment of middle-age. So Marian sighed at her husband's prolonged adolescence, feeling sure that her original thought had been a true one. So many minor evidences came into her mind subsequentlyâ??little intangible things which she had not noticed at the timeâ??and gave substance to her conviction. He had been kind, awkward, even boisterous; he had gone walking beyond his usual habit. He had been restless, suddenly irritable, and then apologetic. Had he written or received letters? If she had known that, she would have been clearer. And what sort of woman was it this time ? That was where the humiliation came: Marian was aware that Howard had no great judgment in the matter of character. If the woman were good she would suffer; if she were not good she wouldfind him as treacherous as any other light lover. If Marian had loved him any longer she would have shrunk from such a thought; but she no longer loved Howard, and that was why she could see this case as one of several, and not as a unique passionate injury to herself. It was curious that she did not lose her sense of ...