r hopes, to know that she was unhappy, discouraged and full of fear
for the future, and to realize that another man was carelessly bringing
upon her all this from which he would have given his own life to shield
her. Yet bad and worse were subordinated to worst. The worst, the most
unbearable phase of the whole situation lay in the knowledge, again and
again brought to the proof, that he himself was the only living person
who had the ability to hold Lorimer even approximately steady, that in a
way the thread of his destiny was knotted together with that of Beatrix.
He loved her absolutely, and the only proof of his love for her must lie
in his strange power to make more tolerable for her the galling yoke of
her marriage to another man.

Even in these few short months, it had become evident to the world that
the yoke was a galling one. Beatrix wore it bravely, even haughtily.
Nevertheless, it was chafing her until she was raw. Like a horse
surprised by the discovery of its own power, from occasional friskiness,
Lorimer was settling into a steadily increasing pace. During the months
of probation, he had held himself fairly steady, rather than lose the
chance of winning Beatrix for his wife. Now that she was won, he snapped
the check he had put upon himself, and yielded to the acquired momentum
gained during his self-imposed repression. By the time he came home from
Europe, Bobby and Thayer both realized that something was amiss. By the
first of June, it was an open secret that all was not well with
Lorimer's soul.

Lorimer still loved Beatrix with all the fervor of his nature. To him,
she was the one and only woman in the world, someone to be caressed and
indulged and played with, the comrade of his domestic hours. But, when
the other mood was upon him, he acknowledged no right upon her part to
offer advice or warning. He treated her as one treats a spoiled child,
fondling her until her presence bored him or interfered with his other
plans, then quietly setting her aside and going his own way alone. As
far as any woman could have held him, Beatrix could have done so; but
in Lorimer's life feminine influence was finite. When he was moved to
take the bits in his teeth, only a man, and but one man at that, was
able to check him. That man was Cotton Mather Thayer.

On a few occasions, Beatrix had endeavored to hold her husband, not from
temptation itself, but from the first steps towards it. She might as
well have tried to