ispered words--everything was changed. A
month or so ago, if he had wanted, he would have gone at once calmly to
her house. It would have seemed harmless, and quite natural. Now it was
impossible to do openly the least thing that strict convention did
not find desirable. Sooner or later they would find him stepping over
convention, and take him for what he was not--a real lover! A real
lover! He knelt down before the empty chair and stretched out his arms.
No substance--no warmth--no fragrance--nothing! Longing that passed
through air, as the wind through grass.

He went to the little round window, which overlooked the river. The last
evening of May; gloaming above the water, dusk resting in the trees, and
the air warm! Better to be out, and moving in the night, out in the ebb
and flow of things, among others whose hearts were beating, than stay in
this place that without her was so cold and meaningless.

Lamps--the passion-fruit of towns--were turning from pallor to full
orange, and the stars were coming out. Half-past nine! At ten o'clock,
and not before, he would walk past her house. To have this something to
look forward to, however furtive and barren, helped. But on a Saturday
night there would be no sitting at the House. Cramier would be at home;
or they would both be out; or perhaps have gone down to their river
cottage. Cramier! What cruel demon had presided over that marring of her
life! Why had he never met her till after she had bound herself to
this man! From a negative contempt for one who was either not sensitive
enough to recognize that his marriage was a failure, or not chivalrous
enough to make that failure bear as little hardly as possible on his
wife, he had come already to jealous hatred as of a monster. To be face
to face with Cramier in a mortal conflict could alone have satisfied his
feeling.... Yet he was a young man by nature gentle!

His heart beat desperately as he approached that street--one of those
little old streets, so beautiful, that belonged to a vanished London. It
was very narrow, there was no shelter; and he thought confusedly of what
he could say, if met in this remote backwater that led nowhere. He would
tell some lie, no doubt. Lies would now be his daily business. Lies and
hatred, those violent things of life, would come to seem quite natural,
in the violence of his love.

He stood a moment, hesitating, by the rails of the old church. Black,
white-veined, with shadowy summits,