three years," she explained.

"But you look ten years younger!" he cried, laughing. Just for a
moment he forgot his troubles. It was incredible, this new Ruth with
firm cheeks and bright colour; gayer even of costume. He could not
understand--and he was little used to that. "I know!" he said; and
then accusingly; "Ruth, you're in love."

At once a little of the old-time pathos crept into her face.

"No," she replied, "I think I've left all that too late."

"What is it, then?" persisted he, manlike.

"It's Norfolk," she said. Not for a million pounds would she have told
him it was Freedom.... "Tell me, Hugh," she added quickly, "what has
happened? Why did you wire for me? Everything seems quite all right!"

"Everything is utterly all wrong," answered Hubert, finding some
consolation in a saying so tremendous; "it couldn't possibly be worse,"
and he poured the whole story forth with the accumulated passion of a
week's not easy silence. How many times he had rehearsed his grievance
to himself--when he felt any danger of relenting!

She listened to the end, attentively, in silence, and as she listened,
it occurred to her too that these three years had wrought a miracle of
change in her. All this, that he was hurling forth indignantly, seemed
to her now so tragically small. She realised the pathos of a life in
which--as with her, in the days gone by--one sense of wrong after
another would always wreck his happiness and wreck the life of any one
he loved. It had been her; now it was Helena; there always would be,
must be, a victim to his tragical self-centred brooding. And he would
not be happy, ever. He would stand alone upon the dignity of his
achievement; alone, he would distress himself that nobody considered
his work, him; alone, upon his deathbed, he would understand too late
that he had never lived at all.

She looked at him with pity as he ended, the tempest lulled by its own
blown-out fury.

"Well," he said presently, as she was silent.

"I can't understand," Ruth answered slowly.

"Can't understand?"

"I haven't read the book," she said, "our village library does not
believe in modern fiction, but--well, what I don't understand is this.
You say _she_ swears the husband wasn't meant for you. Well, then,
from what you tell me of his character in the book--weak, selfish,
bloated with conceit, a little man who thinks he's great, full of
absurd cranks about 'atmosphere' and so on, cruel to hi