o look at, as he sat in the
sunlight outside the summer-house and listened.

The dizziness was quite gone. He had never felt a greater mental
clarity. He knew that he must be suffering; but suffering seemed
relegated to some region of mere physical sensation. He saw and
understood so many things that he had never seen or understood before.
He felt no jealousy, not a pang of the defrauded, injured male, not a
throb of the broken-hearted lover; yet it was not indifference to Kitty
that gave him his immunity; he had never cared more for Kitty; it was,
perhaps, in a tenderer key, as he cared for the station-master, as he
cared, now, for Sir Walter. He was himself soon to die and, as
personalities, as related to his own life, people had ceased to count;
but as lives that were to go on after he was dead, they counted as they
had never done till then; and Kitty most of all. It was this intense
consciousness of her youth, of all the years of life she had to live,
that pressed with such clearness and such fear upon him. She had all her
life before her and she held in her hands a terrible, a beautiful toy
that, suddenly transformed to an engine of destruction, might shatter
her.

Sir Walter was going. He said that he would come again to-morrow.

"Nicholas will be here," said Kitty. She no longer wept. Her voice, now
that the stress of the situation was over, had regained its pensive
sweetness.

"Yes," said Sir Walter, "that's what's so odious, darling; he will
always be here and everything will be twisted and horrible. I like your
husband."

"He is a strange man; I sometimes think that he cares for nothing but
his work; he is all thought and no heart. I don't believe that he would
really mind if I were to go away with you. He would smile, sadly and
ironically, and say: 'Poor, silly child.' And then he would turn to his
papers. I'm nothing to him but a doll, a convenient, domestic doll. And
he doesn't care for playing with dolls except for a little while now and
then." Kitty spoke with a sober pathos that did not veil resentment.

"Ah, you can say all that to me--and expect me to go on bearing seeing
you wasted and thrown away!" Sir Walter broke out. "What stands between
us? Why must we go on suffering like this?"

"Isn't it a great joy--to know that the other is there,
understanding--and caring?"

"A killing sort of joy."

"How cruel, how wrong you are," Kitty murmured; but her husband knew
that for her, indeed, the j