n intolerable brute--and glad to cut the whole thing by accepting
Latimer Berkeley's suggestion to join him for the China expedition at
once. The Berkeley letter coming that next morning was a stroke of fate.
If he had had a day to think about things, he would have followed his
impulse after the anger died down, and gone after her to Mr. Parsons'
London address, but he had already wired to Latimer and his resentful
blood was up.

He remembered how he had not allowed himself to think of her--but had
concentrated his whole mind upon his sport. For it had been tremendous
sport and had interested him deeply, that journey to Tibet. And however
strong feelings may be at moments--absence and fresh interests dull
them. To banish her memory became a good deal easier as time went on,
and even the idea to divorce her if she wished did not seem too hard.

But now he had seen her again--and every spell she had cast over him on
that June night was renewed ten-fold. She was everything he could
desire--she was beautiful and sweet and witty, with a charm which only
complete independence and indifference can ever give a woman in the eyes
of such a man as he. This he did not reason out--thinking himself a very
ordinary person--in fact, never thinking of himself at all or what his
temperament was affected by. He did not realize either that the very
fact of Sabine's being now out of his reach made her appear the one and
only thing he cared to possess. He knew nothing except that he felt
perfectly mad with fate--mad with himself for making an unconditional
promise to Henry, perfectly furious that he had been too stupid to
connect the name of Howard at once with his wife.

And here he was sleeping in her castle--not she sleeping in his! And he
was conforming to her lead--not she following his. And the only thing
for a gentleman to do under the complicated circumstances was to
speedily divorce her according to the Scottish law and let her marry
his friend, Henry Fordyce--give them his blessing and lend them
Arranstoun for the honeymoon!

When he got thus far in his meditations, he simply stood in the middle
of the room and cursed aloud.

Never in his whole life had bolts or bars or circumstances been allowed
to keep him from his will.

And then it did come to his shrewd mind that these things were not
circumstances, but were barriers forged _by himself_.

"If I had not been such an awful brute--and the moment had not been--as
it was--I