p thought she came to the
conclusion that it was her duty to ask Michael frequently to the house.
When Fay once recognised a duty she performed it without delay.

She met with an unexpected obstacle in the way of its adequate
performance. The obstacle was Michael.

The young man came once, and then again after an interval of several
months, but apparently nothing would induce him to frequent the house.

Fay did not recognise her boyish eager lover in the grave sedate man,
old of his age, who had replaced him. His dignified and quite
unobtrusive resistance, which had not indifference at its core, added an
intense, a feverish, interest to Fay's life. She saw that he still cared
for her, and that he did not intend to wound himself a second time. He
had had enough. She put out all her little transparent arts during the
months that followed. The duke watched.

She had implied to her husband with a smile that she had not been very
happy at home. She implied to Michael with a smile that it was not the
duke's fault, but that she was not very happy in her married life, that
he did not care much about her, and that they had but few tastes in
common. Each lived their own life on amicable terms, but somewhat apart
from each other. She owned that she had hoped for something rather
different in marriage. She had, it seemed, started life with a very
exalted ideal of married life, which the duke's

coarse thumb
And finger failed to plumb.

Michael remained outwardly obdurate, but inwardly he weakened. His
tender adoration and respect for Fay, wounded and mutilated though they
had been, had nevertheless survived what in many minds must have proved
their death-blow. He still believed implicitly all she said.

But to him her marriage was the impassable barrier, a barrier as
enfranchisable as the brown earth on a coffin lid.

After many months Fay at last vaguely realised his attitude towards her.
She told herself that she respected it, that it was just what she
wished, was in fact the result of her own tactfully expressed wishes.
She seemed to remember things she had said which would have led him to
behave just as he had done. And then she turned heaven and earth to
regain her personal ascendency over him. She never would have regained
it if an accident had not befallen her. She fell in love with him during
the process.

The day came, an evil day for Michael, when he could no longer doubt it,
when he was not permi