my absence, it never occurred to me to enquire how she
filled her long, empty days. She was sure of me, she trusted me, I knew;
and in the future, I told myself when I had leisure to think of it--next
year, perhaps--I should begin again to play the part of an ardent lover.
She was as desirable--she was far dearer to me than she had ever been in
her life, but while I held her safe and close in my clasp, my mind
reached out with its indomitable energy after the uncertain, the
unattained. I had my wife--what I wanted now was a fortune and a great
name to lay at her feet.

And all these months did she ever question, ever ask herself, while she
watched me struggling day after day with the lust for power, if the
thing that I sought to give her would in the end turn to Dead Sea fruit
at her lips? Question she may have done in her heart, but no hint of it
ever reached me--no complaint of her marriage ever disturbed the outward
serenity in which we lived. Yet, deep in myself, I heard always a still
small voice, which told me that she demanded something far subtler and
finer than I had given--something that belonged inherently to the nature
of George Bolingbroke rather than to mine. Even now, though she loved me
and not George, it was George who was always free, who was always
amiable, who was always just ready and just waiting to be called. On
another day, a month or two later, he came in again with his blossom of
sweet alyssum, and again her eyes grew shining and grateful, while the
old bruise throbbed quickly to life in my heart.

"Is it all right still?" she asked, and he answered, "All right," with
his rare smile, which lent a singular charm to his softened features.

Then he glanced across at me and made, I realised, an effort to be
friendly.

"You ought to get a horse, Ben," he remarked, "it would keep you from
getting glum. If you'd hunted with us yesterday, you would have seen
Bonny Page take a gate like a bird."

"I tried to follow," said Sally, "but Prince Charlie refused."

"You mean I wouldn't let go your bridle," returned George, in a
half-playful, half-serious tone.

The bruise throbbed again. Here, also, I was shut out--I who had carried
potatoes to George's door while he was off learning to follow the
hounds. His immaculate, yet careless, dress; the perfection of his
manner, which seemed to make him a part of the surroundings in which he
stood; the very smoothness and slenderness of the hand that rested on