Page:The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman.djvu/197

 his wife’s house. . . And apparently it was the common talk of the clubs; and no doubt kind friends were secretly pitying me. . . The last infatuation of the middle-aged man—they were telling one another that I was six years Arthur’s senior—and what could you expect? As if I had made any secret of my age! It is in the books. And they were, perhaps, wondering how soon he would outgrow it and how much I knew and whether I minded. . . There was the rub—this savage, impertinent curiosity. What business of theirs if my husband humiliated me? And, strangely enough, one has so often seen it with other women and somehow always fancied that it would never happen to oneself. The swan-song. . . As a man feels that his youth is slipping out of his grasp, he makes this one last despairing effort. And love at that age is like a blow from a sledge-hammer; Arthur was prepared to run away with the woman. Indeed I know what I am talking about. Then, I felt, it was time for me to intervene. ..

You had been clever enough to find out the address—the house, by the way, Arthur did not give her. She told me so, but without that I knew enough of his finances to realize that it was physically impossible—; and all the way there I tried to understand this strange streak