s he remembered them in other days.

"Yes," said Amaldi, "he really merged his private self in the self of
humanity. Buddha was not more a Buddhist in that respect than Cavour
was."

"And you will stay here this winter, and tell America something of him?"

"I think so ... yes."

It solved for him the riddle of being longer near her without causing
comment.

"Ah," said Sophy, "that will be something to look forward to."

She was utterly unaware of how much this sentence and the tone in which
she said it revealed to Amaldi.

There was, then, an emptiness in her life. But the more that Amaldi
realised the sort of existence she now led, the more he felt convinced
that even love could not have compensated her for such surroundings. He
knew her latest book of poems almost by heart. Their exaltation of
spirit had made him feel when he read them that he had offered his hot,
human love to one of those women who are by nature Vestals.

He, too, had been stirred by that cry, "I am the Wind's, and the Wind is
mine." But with him it had been the cold thrill of appeased jealousy.
"No mortal lover" would possess what had been denied him. There was a
bleak joy in this thought. Then had come the news of her second
marriage.

But in this marriage he now felt that both the poet and the woman
suffered.

XXIX

Amaldi had not yet seen Loring unduly affected by drink. The latter was
on his guard just at that time. His fear of Belinda made him afraid also
of wine. Wine was the Delilah that delivered him bound hand and foot to
her Philistine sister, Belinda.

Sophy noticed this restraint and a faint hope sprang in her heart. She
felt a sort of sad, maternal yearning over Morris--sad, because the part
of mother-wife was but a melancholy one to take, after having played
Selene to his Endymion. She would have got near him if she could. But
he slammed the door of his heart in her face. What we have ceased to
worship we resent, when it is still a part of our daily existence.

Loring resented Sophy's "superiority" as much as he had once adored it.
He blamed it upon her that Belinda was for him "_l'echanson de
l'amour_," the "_janua diaboli_" of the ancient church. If a wife
repulsed her husband, then she need not wonder when he went elsewhere.
It was plainly her fault. Wives should be mirrors--they should reflect
moods--all moods. The woman who locked out her lawful husband, for such
a high-flown reason as that he had taken a