had of course devoted herself to him. It was she who went up with
his breakfast, who read to him during the morning, who tried to remember
everything that happened out of doors to tell him on her return; it was
she who had done many hundreds of patiences in the days when he was not
well enough to play at chess. He was hardly well enough now, but he had
set his heart upon the first day when he should come down and play chess
with Rendel as a sort of pivot in his miserable existence. And now the
moment had come. How should he know that for all practical purposes his
son-in-law was a different being from the young man who had come
upstairs to see him the day before? For yesterday Rendel had come up and
talked to him about indifferent things, not telling him, lest he should
be excited, of the evil rumours that were filling the air, and had gone
downstairs again himself with a miserably unoccupied day in front of
him--a day in which to remember and overcome the fact that, instead of
being in the arena of which the echoes reached him, he was doomed to be
a spectator from afar, who could take no part in the fray. But so much
Sir William had not known. How should we any of us know what the inward
counterpart is to the outward manifestation? know that the person who
comes into the room may be, although appearing the same, different from
the one who went out? He knew only that the Rendel of this morning had
said with a smile, "I am looking forward to the moment when you will
checkmate me again." And Sir William had a right to expect that, that
moment having come, Rendel should feel the importance and pleasure of it
as much as he did himself. But it was not the same Rendel who sat there,
it was not the unoccupied spectator ready to join his leisure to that of
another; it was a resolute combatant who had been suddenly called into a
front post, and for whom the whole aspect of the world had changed. It
was an absolute physical effort to Rendel, as the door opened and he saw
Sir William, to bring his mind back to the conditions of a few hours
before. The fact of any one coming in at that moment called him back to
earth again, turned him violently about to face the commonplace
importunities of existence. Sir William had probably not formulated to
himself what he had vaguely expected, but it certainly was not the
puzzled, half-questioning look, the indescribable air of being taken
aback, altered at once by a quick impulse into something