Conflagration

To see his wife casually in a crowd, and to fall desperately in love with
her for the second time, was a unique experience even in Tyson's life.
But it had its danger. He had never been jealous before; now a feeling
very like jealousy had been roused by seeing her with Stanistreet. He had
followed her to the "Criterion"; he had hurried out before the end of the
piece, and hung about Ridgmount Gardens till he had seen her homecoming.
Stanistreet's immediate departure was a relief to a certain anxiety that
he was base enough to feel. And still there remained a vague suspicion
and discomfort. He had to begin all over again with her. In their first
courtship she was a child; in their second she was a woman. Hitherto, the
creature of a day, she had seemed to spring into life afresh every
morning, without a memory of yesterday or a thought of to-morrow; she had
had no past, not even an innocent one. And now he had no notion what
experiences she might not have accumulated during this year in which he
had left her. That was her past; and they had the future before them.

They had been alone together for three days, three days and three nights
of happiness; and on the evening of the fourth day Tyson had found her
reading--yes, actually reading!

He sat down opposite her to watch the curious sight.

Perhaps she had said to herself: "Some day I shall be old, and very
likely I shall be ugly. If I am stupid too, he will be bored, and perhaps
he will leave me. So now--I am going to be his intellectual companion."