ce action. He's mad:
and no decent lawyer would take his case into court: but the fact
remains that poor Laura has been turned out of doors, and for
that I am, in myself-centred carelessness, to blame. You won't
misunderstand me, will you, if I say that while this abominable
business is hanging over me we can't be formally engaged? Val
must be told--nothing would induce me to keep him in the dark
for an hour. But for all that I shan't know how to face him.
What! ask him for you, and in the same breath tell him that Laura
has been turned adrift because I've compromised her? If I were Val
there'd be the devil and all to pay. In the meantime I must--I
must be sure of you. But you change like the wind: last night you
refused me, and to-day . . ." He walked over to the window and stood
looking out into the garden, fighting down one of those tremendous
storms of memory which swept over him from time to time and made the
present seem absolutely one with the past.

"What's the matter?"

He turned, but his voice was thick. "Last time I trusted a woman
she betrayed me."

"You're thinking of your wife."

"I often think of her," Hyde said savagely, "and wonder if all
women are tarred with the same brush."

"Oh, that is brutal," said Isabel, paling: "but you're tired
out."

It was true, he was too tired to rest: heartsick and ashamed,
painfully aware of the immense harm he had done and uncertain how
to mend it. This sense of guilt was the more harassing because
he was not in the habit of regretting his actions, good or bad:
but now he could no longer fling off responsibility: it was
riveted on him by all the other emotions which Wanhope had
evoked, pity for Bernard, and affection for Laura, and humility
before Val.

Among the lilacs a robin was singing his delicate and bold
welcome to autumn, and over the window a branch of red roses
nodded persistently and rhythmically in a draught of wind.
Lawrence stood looking out into the garden of which he saw
nothing, and Isabel, watching him, felt tears coming into her own
eyes, the tears of that unnerving pity which a woman feels for
the man she loves, when she has never before seen him in defeat
or depression. No wonder he thought her fickle! How could he
read what was dark to her?

Isabel had not deliberately altered her mind in the night. She
had lain down free and risen up bond, waking from sound sleep,
the sleep of a child, to find that the silent inner Court