er; a
perpetual consequent warfare of her spirit and the nature subject to the
thousand sensational hypocrisies invoked for concealment of its reviled
brutish baseness, held the woman suspended from her emotions. She coldly
felt that a caress would have melted her, would have been the temporary
rapture. Coldly she had the knowledge that the considerate withholding of
it helped her spirit to escape a stain. Less coldly, she thanked at heart
her beloved, for being a gentleman in their yoke. It plighted them over
flesh.

He talked to her on the pillow, just a few sentences; and, unlike
himself, a word of City affairs: 'That fellow Blathenoy, with his
increasing multitude of bills at the Bank: must watch him there, sit
there regularly. One rather likes his wife. By the way, if you see him
near me to-morrow, praise the Spanish climate; don't forget. He heads the
subscription list of Lady Blachington's Charity.'

Victor chuckled at Colney's humping of shoulders and mouth, while the
tempest seemed echoing a sulphurous pessimist. 'If old Colney had
listened to me, when India gave proof of the metal and South Africa began
heaving, he'd have been a fairly wealthy man by now . . . ha! it would
have genialized him. A man may be a curmudgeon with money: the rule is
for him to cuddle himself and take a side, instead of dashing at his
countrymen all round and getting hated. Well, Colney popular, can't be
imagined; but entertaining guests would have diluted his acid. He has the
six hundred or so a year he started old bachelor on; add his miserable
pay for Essays. Literature! Of course, he sours. But don't let me hear of
bachelors moralists. There he sits at his Temple Chambers hatching
epigrams . . . pretends to have the office of critic! Honest old fellow,
as far as his condition permits. I tell him it will be fine to-morrow.'

'You are generally right, dear,' Nataly said.

Her dropping breath was audible.

Victor smartly commended her to slumber, with heaven's blessing on her
and a dose of soft nursery prattle.

He squeezed her hand. He kissed her lips by day. She heard him sigh
settling himself into the breast of night for milk of sleep, like one of
the world's good children. She could have turned to him, to show him she
was in harmony with the holy night and loving world, but for the fear
founded on a knowledge of the man he was; it held her frozen to the
semblance of a tombstone lady beside her lord, in the aisle where horro