e window the Duchess looked towards opened part way:
it was under the eaves and there must have been a dovecote near, for
there came the soft sound of cooing like the call of a young bird.
Possibly the gentle note reached the woman's hearing as well, for her
face transcendently softened.

"I think," she said with evident effort to speak in a commonplace tone,
"it would be quite futile to urge Cecil to come."

"Oh, I shan't advise him so."

Bulstrode's quick answer made her look at him in so much surprise that
he went on to say: "I would not, in justice to him, in justice to the
great love I have been permitted to see, advise him to come."

The Duchess, during the months of analysis, suffering and experience,
had not admitted to herself that should her husband return she would
receive him, nor had she decided as to quite how obdurate she would be,
and she was curious at the attitude of this gentle friend. She naively
asked:

"Why would you not advise him so?"

Bulstrode said, still continuing his pleasant sententiousness, "The
woman's heart must be as stable as the man's is uncertain, and the man
who comes back after such a separation must not find a woman who does
not know her own mind. He must, on the contrary, find one who has no
mind or will or life but his."

As he looked at the person to whom he spoke he was somewhat struck by
the maternal look in her: he had never clearly discovered it before.
Her breast from which the fur had fallen, as it rose and fell under her
soft gown, was full, generous, and beautiful; even as he spoke in a
certain accusation against her, she seemed to have altered.

"Westboro'," he said a little confused, "must come back to a woman,
Duchess, to a woman--to a consoler. I wish I could express
myself--almost to a mother--as well as to a wife."

The ardent color dyed her face again; her lips moved. She put out her
hand towards him, and as he took it he understood that she wished him
to bid her good-by and to leave her alone. He heard what she struggled
to say:

"He must not come, he must not come."

"No," he accepted sadly for his friend, "No, he must not come."

Bulstrode had chosen those times for going to The Dials when his host
was least likely to take note of his absence; but it happened that more
than once the Duke missed him at just the wrong moment, and more than
once had been given the direction in which Bulstrode's footsteps had
turned.

One morning, during a