then and now a fair knowledge of mankind, but even if when I first
met the Stricklands I had the experience which I have now,
I do not believe that I should have judged them
differently. But because I have learnt that man is incalculable,
I should not at this time of day be so surprised by the news
that reached me when in the early autumn I returned to London.

I had not been back twenty-four hours before I ran across Rose
Waterford in Jermyn Street.

"You look very gay and sprightly," I said. "What's the matter
with you?"

She smiled, and her eyes shone with a malice I knew already.
It meant that she had heard some scandal about one of her
friends, and the instinct of the literary woman was all alert.

"You did meet Charles Strickland, didn't you?"

Not only her face, but her whole body, gave a sense of alacrity.
I nodded. I wondered if the poor devil had been
hammered on the Stock Exchange or run over by an omnibus.

"Isn't it dreadful? He's run away from his wife."

Miss Waterford certainly felt that she could not do her
subject justice on the curb of Jermyn Street, and so,
like an artist, flung the bare fact at me and declared that
she knew no details. I could not do her the injustice of supposing
that so trifling a circumstance would have prevented her from