His relations with women had been, like everything else about him, ambiguous.

Nobody had ever been able quite to gauge the shifting, emotional complexities of his married life; Lady Caroline vanished; but his peculiar susceptibilities remained.

Female society of some kind or other was necessary to him, and he did not stint himself; a great part of every day was invariably spent in it.

The feminine element in him made it easy, made it natural and inevitable for him to be the friend of a great many women; but the masculine element in him was strong as well.

In such circumstances it is also easy, it is even natural, perhaps it is even inevitable, to be something more than a friend.