ourse he had a certain preference for her; and it was the sort
of triumph that such a man would relish--to carry her off from you at the
last moment. I always recognized _his_ influence in the sensational
elements of that denouement. He liked her after a fashion--to preside in
a princess-like style in his big house, to illustrate to advantage his
florid expenditure of money, to sparkle with wit and diamonds at the head
of his table--a fine surface for decoration she has! But Royston couldn't
love--couldn't really care for anything but himself--a man of that
temperament."

Bayne rose; he had reached the limit of his endurance; he could maintain
his tutored indifference, but he would not seek to analyze the event anew
or to adjust himself to the differentiations of sentiment that Briscoe
seemed disposed to expect him to canvass.

The encroachments of the surging seas of mist had reduced the limits of
the world to the interior of the bungalow, and the myriad interests and
peoples of civilization to the little household circle. The day in the
pervasive constraint that hampered their relations wore slowly away.
Under the circumstances, even the resources of bridge were scarcely to be
essayed. Bayne lounged for hours with a book in a swing on the veranda.
Briscoe, his hands in his pockets, his hat on the back of his head, his
cigar cocked between his teeth--house-bound, he smoked a prodigious
number of them for sheer occupation--strolled aimlessly in and out, now
in the stables, now listening and commenting as Gladys at the piano
played the music of his choice. Lillian had a score of letters to write.
Her mind, however, scarcely followed her pen as she sat in the little
library that opened from the big, cheery hall. Her thoughts were with all
that had betided in the past and what might have been. She canvassed
anew, as often heretofore, her strange infatuation, like a veritable
aberration, so soon she had ceased to love her husband, to make the
signal and significant discovery that he was naught to love. She had
always had a sort of enthusiasm for the truth in the abstract--not so
much as a moral endowment, but a supreme fixity, the one immutable value,
superior to vicissitudes. She could not weep for a lie; she could only
wonder how it should ever have masqueraded as the holy verities.

She would not rehearse her husband's faults, and the great disaster of
the revelation of his true character that made the few short years s