JASPER Merton was a man who had been born with a curious kind of conscience. He was perpetually looking at it, dusting it, and seeing that it kept in what he considered perfect working order. In reality it only worked spasmodically and at unexpected intervals. He possessed, also, an enormous amount of that quality which is generally termed artistic sensitiveness, but which is most frequently a polite and pretty name for selfishness. He see-sawed between conscience and—it must be given its right name—selfishness, in a manner which made his life not only uncomfortable to himself, but almost equally uncomfortable to others.  
He had, too, a skeleton which he kept in a cupboard, in other words, in a small—a very small—house in Chiswick. That skeleton was a woman. She was his wife, and a secret.
 
None of his fellow-artists had ever dreamt of asking him if he were married. It never dawned on them to ask a man, who was apparently a bachelor and who obviously disliked the company of women, such a question; and he had no near relations to trouble their heads about him.
 
He was twenty-three when he married her, and she was eighteen. She was a slight, fair-haired girl with blue eyes and a lovable nature. He had worshipped her to the whole extent of his selfish disposition. At the end of a year a child had been born to them. It had lived two years—a toddling blue-eyed mite with fair hair like its mother. It had little caressing ways and soft baby cooings of laughter.
 
But one day the laughter had ceased, and from the nursery had come sounds of a child in anguish. A basin of boiling water had been left on the table by a careless nurse, and pulled over by a pair of small, clutching hands. A week of horror had followed. The child had lived for four days in agony, even drugs could not soothe its pain, or quiet the terrible sobbing voice. Jasper had fled from the house.
 
When he had returned his wife had met him white and tearless.
 
“My baby’s at peace, thank God,” she had said. And then she had laughed. She had not slept except from momentary exhaustion for four nights and days.
 
Later in the evening he had found her drunk in the dead child’s room. He had carried her from it and locked the door.
 
In the morning she had come to him and had tried to speak. His look of disgust had made speech impossible.
 
“Jasper——” she had said brokenly.
 
“I—I can’t say anything,” he had stammered. And he had gone from her.
 
When he had returned in the evening it was to find her again drunk. This time in the dining-room.
 
That was the beginning. He had never been able to hide his disgust, his love had been killed. Conscience, which held the word Duty before him, spelling it with a capital, told him to make the best of things; his sensitiveness shrank from the woman as from something loathsome.
 
After the child’s funeral she had pulled herself partially together, and he had never found her in the same condition again. But she had lost all her old charm. She grew listless in manner, slovenly and untidy in dress. Now and then she would look at him with the eyes of a dumb thing asking for help. He never saw her eyes. He had avoided looking at them. The sight of her—her untidy hair, her neglected dress—had offended his sensitive taste. Little by little they had drifted mentally further apart. Finally they had separated. Even the separation had been gradual. First he had taken his small house in Chiswick and the studio in Chelsea, living at home, and going daily to his work. She had known what the outcome would be, but had said nothing. Later he had begun to sleep at the studio, returning only for the week-end. He had spoken of the distance, making it an excuse.
 
And now there was only occasional visits, prompted entirely by conscience. He had left the studio to pay one of these visits that afternoon. An extraordinary priggishness of manner towards his fellow-men was an invariable preface to them.
 
As the tram bore him into the suburbs he gave a little shiver of disgust. The commonplace ugliness of the houses was an eyesore to him. He pictured the inhabitants as dull, well-meaning, ultra-respectable—leading a carpet-slipper, roast-beef, little-music-in-the-evenings—kind of life. He thought of the men as all old and fat, or young and conceited; of the women as thin and careworn, or flashy and bejewelled. His mental pictures were either extremely commonplace or extremely tawdry.
 
Suddenly his conscience began to fidget. It was becoming uncomfortable. What right had he to feel like that, it said. They were every bit as good as he was. Who was he to sit in judgment on his fellow-men?
 
He put the mental pictures aside. He said a little prayer for charity. Then he looked at his conscience again, and satisfied himself that he had swept away the dust specks which had caused it a momentary uneasiness.
 
But he never thought of the poetry that might be hidden away in the lives passed within those ugly walls, nor listened for the old, old tunes of love and sorrow, hope and fear, birth and death, that were played for them as they were played for those who dwelt in infinitely more picturesque surroundings. And if he had heard the music he would probably have said that the metre was out of time, the notes old and cracked, or thin and tuneless.
 
At last he left the tram and turned up a side street. The houses in it were small, red brick, and each of a pattern exactly like the other. They stood a little way back from the pavement, separated from it by a low brick wall on top of which was an ugly iron railing. Each of the tiny plots of ground in front of the houses was divided from the neighbouring plot by more iron railings. Some of the plots were merely gravel, others grass, while a few had blossomed out into flower-beds gay with flowers.
 
He turned into one of the gravel plots and went up four steps to the front door. He rang the bell. His face was perfectly expressionless. It was like the face of a man who is self-hypnotized.
 
“Your mistress in?” he said to the untidy woman who answered the door.
 
“Yes, sir. Will you come into the sitting-room? I’ll tell ’er.”
 
Jasper went into the sitting-room. He stood on the hearthrug in the attitude of a stranger. The tea-things had not been cleared away, they were still on the table, which was covered with a white cloth showing various grease spots. The tea-things themselves were on a black tin tray with the enamel scratched off in two or three places. There was a loaf of bread on the table, a pat of soft-looking butter on a plate, a pot of strawberry jam from which the spoon had fallen making a red smear on the cloth, and a remnant of stale cake.
 
The furniture in the room was not ugly, but the whole place had a desolate look. A French novel in a yellow paper cover lay open face downwards on a small table near the hearthrug. Jasper picked it up, glanced at the title, and put it down again with a little movement of disgust.
 
The door opened and a woman came in. She was wearing a loose and rather shabby brown dress; her hair, which was really a beautiful pale gold, looked unbrushed and uncared for. She wore it parted and in an untidy knot at the nape of her neck. The only neat thing about her were her hands, which were small hands, the nails polished and manicured.
 
“Oh, it’s you, Jasper,” she said, and she sat down. She did not even offer to shake hands.
 
“How do you do, Bridget,” he said gravely.
 
She laughed. “Is that a gentle reminder to me of my manners, or a query as to my health? I’m all right, thanks.”
 
Jasper stood irresolute. This nonchalant attitude of his wife pained him. She was usually more apathetic.
 
“Won’t you sit down,” she said politely, “that is if you wish to stay for your usual hour.”
 
Jasper put his hat and stick on the sofa and sat down on a chair near the table. His eye fell on the tray.
 
“Why don’t you get a new one,” he said half irritably, “or at least cover it with a tea-cloth? I hate these black, scratched things. I don’t keep you short of money.”
 
She glanced towards the offending article.
 
“You don’t often see it, do you?” she queried. “I’m used to it; besides, I haven’t an artistic eye. Emma shall take it away if it displeases you.”
 
She rang the bell, and the woman who had opened the front door appeared.
 
“Take away the tea-things,” said Bridget carelessly. “Mr. Merton doesn’t like to see them.”
 
The woman piled the things on to the tray, and gathered the cloth in a bundle under one arm. She left the room with them.
 
There was a silence.
 
“Well,” said Bridget encouragingly, “five minutes of the hour have gone.”
 
Jasper moved impatiently. “I don’t know what is the matter with you this evening, B............