had not yet written to her, according to his parole: this issue was
clear; he could not send a letter to Guida until he was freed from that
condition. It had been a bitter pill to swallow; and many times he
had had to struggle with himself since his arrival at the castle. For
whatever the new ambitions and undertakings, there was still a woman
in the lonely distance for whose welfare he was responsible, for whose
happiness he had yet done nothing, unless to give her his name under
sombre conditions was happiness for her. All that he had done to remind
him of the wedded life he had so hurriedly, so daringly, so eloquently
entered upon, was to send his young wife fifty pounds. Somehow, as
this fact flashed to his remembrance now, it made him shrink; it had a
certain cold, commercial look which struck him unpleasantly. Perhaps,
indeed, the singular and painful shyness--chill almost--with which Guida
had received the fifty pounds now communicated itself to him by the
intangible telegraphy of the mind and spirit.

All at once that bare, glacial fact of having sent her fifty pounds
acted as an ironical illumination of his real position. He felt
conscious that Guida would have preferred some simple gift, some little
thing that women love, in token and remembrance, rather than this
contribution to the common needs of existence. Now that he came to think
of it, since he had left her in Jersey, he had never sent her ever so
small a gift. He had never given her any gifts at all save the Maltese
cross in her childhood--and her wedding-ring. As for the ring, it had
never occurred to him that she could not wear it save in the stillness
of the night, unseen by any eye save her own. He could not know that
she had been wont to go to sleep with the hand clasped to her breast,
pressing close to her the one outward token she had of a new life, begun
with a sweetness which was very bitter and a bitterness only a little
sweet.

Philip was in no fitting mood to write a letter. Too many emotions were
in conflict in him at once. They were having their way with him; and,
perhaps, in this very complexity of his feelings he came nearer to being
really and acutely himself than he had ever been in his life. Indeed,
there was a moment when he was almost ready to consign the Duke and all
that appertained to the devil or the deep sea, and to take his fate as
it came. But one of the other selves of him calling down from the little
attic where dark thin