Char-asiab where he had gained his cross. She was only his ward then, far away over the black water; but he had had his vision of her, present mistress of his heart, future mistress of his home. And in suchwise were the speech great of eloquence and the wife great of virtues put in blissful conjunction in the man's mind.

She had indeed made as though she would go to the House, and from the dusky mystery of the Ladies' Gallery listen to the glowing periods of her lord; but she was dissuaded, for he had felt fear lest the fact of an eye and an ear being upon him should cause him to break down, and fail lamentably. So Mrs. Kennedy was not to come, and would go alone to Mrs. Vereker's reception, and afterwards to Lady Barrington's ball. He was musing on the possibility of her being at home in Wharncliffe Square awaiting him, as the cab progressed through Knightsbridge, at a pace all too funereal for his eagerness. He pressed his repeater. It was a quarter to one; and the possibility seemed to become a probability. The Colonel was a merciful man, merciful to his beasts, and perforce used to economise them, so she would take the same means of conveyance as himself. His thoughts had reached this juncture, when there came upon the cab a series of jolts, terminating in its overturn against the impediments of some street repairs. Kennedy jumped nimbly out in time to save himself from accident, and the cabman escaped more serious damage than a few cuts about the head; but the horse was down not far from the red glow of the cresset, which had caused him to shy, and bring disaster on his burden. A policeman strolled up, the watchman in the box beside the cresset took a sleepy interest in the efforts made to bring the horse upon his feet, and a couple of link-bearers, having scented by some instinct the possibility of a chance copper, also drew nigh.

Even as they did so another hansom loomed out of the dark, was visible for one brief red-litten moment, and then was once more gathered into the fog. Colonel Kennedy glanced casually inside, and his glance had a curious effect upon him. He turned white to his very lips, and had to lean against the watch-box for support.

Inside he had beheld a man and a woman. The man's arms were about the woman, and her face pillowed on his shoulder was close, very close to his. And the face of the woman was the face of Mrs. Kennedy!

The voices around Kennedy sounded far away in the distance; and his gaze still held nothing but these two faces in the cab. Then another picture shaped itself before him, and he was carried back through the years to a little canton

ment chapel, whitewashed within and without, where Gertrude West had been made his wife. And out of a corner of the chapel glowered, white as the walls themselves, the face of the man in the hansom.

Mechanically he paid the cabman, and walked on through the blackness, turning instinctively down the street that leads to Wharncliffe Square. As he came round the corner of the Square, a cab passed him; and it cost him an effort to abstain from calling upon the driver to stop. persevered on his way till he reached the house. All the windows were dark save one, that of his wife's boudoir. The servants had evidently gone to bed; and he felt a little pleasure in that, for he wished no risk of interruption.

But he

As the portière of the room closed behind him, his wife half turned round from the fire-light.

"At last, dear!" she said.

There was a trace, a very slight trace, of trembling in her voice; bnt she passed it off with a pretty little yawn of ennui. Kennedy gave no response, and she marvelled to see him standing there, still clad in out-door apparel. The last half-hour seemed to have made an old man of him. A flood of enquiries burst from her.

"What is it dearest? Has anything dreadful happened? An accident?" He lifted his hand and she was dumb.

"Gertrude Kennedy ", he said, in a dry emotionless voice, "Will you kindly oblige me with the present address of Captain Herbert Compton?"

"What, Bertie Compton that we used to know in India? Why it's ages since we heard anything of him. I haven't seen him since" Kennedy's voice lost its dryness, and broke in tumultuously on her tones of faint animation.

"It's a lie, a black lie, I tell you! Not half an hour ago you had his arms round you. Will you dare to deny it? By God this means blood, mine or his, and on your head be it!" All the pent up fury of the man, that had accumulated during his walk, burst forth; and the woman visibly quailed before it, shrinking back in her seat. Then she made as though she would grovel at his feet.

"Dick, Dick, forgive me, forgive me! I didn't mean,—I've been very foolish, very wicked, but I can explain."

"Explain! I see you with another man's arms round you, and you talk to me of explanation! Thank you, I have got all the explanation that I want from you. Perhaps Compton will favor me with the rest!

"Oh Dick", she sobbed piteously, leaning towards him and trying to take his hands in hers. Won't you let me tell

you"

"If you will tell me Captain Compton's address without further delay I shall be greatly obliged", he said, and brusquely turned upon his heel-so brusquely that Mrs. Kennedy only saved herself by an effort from falling face downwards behind him. That effort seemed to bring about a crisis within her. When Kennedy turned round after pacing across the room, she was no longer crouching upon the chair; but stood erect with clenched hands and hard pressed lips. She said nothing, only looked; but in that look he read, a strange and bitter thing, that the positions were changed.

There were a few moments of intense silence during which only the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece was audible. The air seemed, as it were, overcharged with sorrow and anger that must flame forth and with suddenness. Mrs. Kennedy still looked steadily, unflinchingly at her husband, and he saw how on her face, from which all shame and confusion had faded, began to dawn a cold contempt. She walked slowly to her bureau, carefully selected a pen and sheet of paper, wrote something and placed it on the table.

"Here is Captain Compton's address,” she said: "I'm not quite certain of his number in the street: I have put it down as 47, but it may be 45. However, you will be able to find him no doubt. When you see him, please thank him on my behalf for a very pleasant evening-quite like old times--Oh, and you might thank him on your own account for having seen me home safely."

Kennedy listened, his hands gripping feverishly the back of the chair. For a moment it seemed as though there would be a recrudescence of his wrath; then, in spite of himself, he fell to admiring his wife's coolness-somehow it reminded him of the superb impudence of a young subaltern he had seen in Afganistan stroll across a bullet-swept plateau to regain his corps, with the nonchalance of a man crossing Pall Mall. He remembered how that subaltern was Compton, and again he felt humbled and in the dust.

"If you can spare me your attention for just a moment or two longer", Mrs. Kennedy continued, "I should like to make it perfectly clear that I haven't the slightest objection to your calling on Captain Compton. He might be able to give you some instruction in manners-he at least is no coward, he would not spurn a defenceless woman at his feet...."

66

But Gertie, I only want you to explain. . . ."

Explain! I have no explanation to give you. To-morrow, perhaps, when you are a little more under your own control, you will be able to discuss our future arrangements. But there will be no explanation, be certain of that!"

She turned to the mirror and adjusted a ribbon in her hair.

"Perhaps there is one explanation, I may as well give you at once", she said as she faced round, "I never had the slightest spark of love for you in my life; I may once have had a little respect, but there-let by-gones be by-gones. . . ."

Kennedy caught at the last phrase as a drowning man might catch at a straw: "Let by-gones be by-gones, Gertie, forgive me as I forgive you. I ought not to have spoken as I did. But I didn't mean. . . ."

"Oh, you didn't mean either ", she said, with a quiet irony that told both on herself and him, "It appears there has been very little meaning in our actions to-night. Probably you will be able to see a little more of it by to-morrow. In the meantime I shall have the honor of bidding you goodnight."

She turned to go, but he tried to take her hand in his.

"Gertie, my own darling, won't you say one little word to show you forgive me-only a word?"

"I see no reason, whatever, for prolonging this interview, or any pretence of dutiful affection I may have kept up," she said, and the door closed behind her.

Kennedy sank down upon a chair, and buried his face in his hands. The clock on the mantelpiece struck two, and then three; and distant church clocks sounded dimly in echo. The fire turned black in the grate, and there was silence save for the foot-fall of a policeman on his beat. But Kennedy sat motionless in the same position until half-past three. Mrs. Kennedy was able to give the precise hour, for she had looked at her watch when she heard the hall-door shut.

On the following day there was a paragraph in the evening papers, that began after this fashion:

"This morning between sen and eleven, the officials at Hyde Park discovered a body floating in the Serpentine. All attempts at restoration to life were made, but without success. It was identified as that of Colonel Kennedy, M.P. for the Thirdfield Division of Wessex. It is supposed that the deceased gentleman must have fallen accidentally into the Serpentine, during the dense fog which prevailed last night, and in the early hours of the morning."

But Mrs. Kennedy thought she knew otherwise.

WILLIAM G. HUTCHISON.

THE ENGLISH SPORTING INSTINCT.

THE sporting instinct, as a factor in the national life of the English people, does not receive from the sociological student, I am afraid, that amount of consideration which its relative importance would appear to warrant. Hence my apology for introducing the subject with the view of eliciting an expression of opinion from some of the abler pens associated with the staff of the FREE REVIEW. It has been alleged, and with some amount of satiric truth, I think, that an Englishman is never so truly happy as when about to take part in a slaughtering expedition. The fundamental truth underlying this mot implies the negation of the stereotyped fallacy that in labor man finds his greatest happiness. Ask the first hundred men you meet to choose between "ten thousand a year and a park" and a life of "dignified labor ", and I venture to say that the odd man who is allured by the latter offer will be found a fit subject for a glass case in the British Museum. Men naturally prefer play to work, and if the masses cannot command their deer forests, salmon waters, and hunting studs, they take such gifts as the gods give, and go forth with equanimity to witness a rival half-back maimed or slaughtered amidst the deafening plaudits of ten thousand football fanatics. A smaller, and the more sensible, proportion of the democracy follow the saner and less gregarious form of sport associated with dog-racing, pigeon-flying, ratting, or angling; but they also fail to escape the pious anathema of the Nonconformist Conscience, which interprets the wants of mankind through the medium of Moody and Sankey-cum-Self-HelpSmiles. I am willing to admit that the exponents of the modern Puritanism, like the Socialist leaders, are imbued with a genuine passion to ameliorate the social and moral condition of the English workers; but in approaching their task I maintain that both sets of reformers have hitherto grievously erred in ignoring the sporting instinct, which the Factory System would long ago have destroyed had it not been an inextinguishable feature in English national life. It may be said that Socialists do not contemplate the suppression of sport, but rather in their ideal State propose to give the masses a fuller opportunity of following their proclivities in this respect. Assuming this reply, I still maintain that the Independent Labor Party are tactically wrong in refusing to utilise the sporting instinct of the masses as a possible