one the guiding star of her existence.
From her childhood she had been devoted to this cousin, who, since her
earliest days, had been her playmate, and at heart had wished to marry
him, and no one else. Then he began his experiments, and drifted quite
away from her. Afterwards things changed, and they became engaged. Again
the experiments were carried on, with the aid of another woman, and
again he drifted away from her; also the drifting in this instance was
attended by serious and painful complications.

Now the complications had ceased to exist; they threatened her happiness
no more. Indeed, had they been much worse than they were she would have
overlooked them, being altogether convinced of the truth of the old
adage which points out the folly of cutting off one's nose to spite
one's face. Whatever his failings or shortcomings, Morris was her joy,
the human being in whose company she delighted; without whom, indeed,
her life would be flat, stale, and unprofitable. The stronger then was
her determination that he should not slip back into his former courses;
those courses which in the end had always brought about estrangement
from herself.

Inventions, the details of which she could not understand, meant, as
she knew well, long days and weeks of solitary brooding; therefore
inventions, and, indeed, all unnecessary work, were in his case to be
discouraged. Such solitary brooding also drew from the mind of Morris
a vague mist of thought about matters esoteric which, to Mary's belief,
had the properties of a miasma that crept like poison through his being.
She wished for no more star-gazing, no more mysticism, and, above all,
no more memories of the interloping woman who, in his company, had
studied its doubtful and dangerous delights.

Although since the day of Morris's confession Mary had never even
mentioned the name of Stella to him, she by no means forgot that such
a person once existed. Indeed, carelessly and without seeming to be
anxious on the subject, she informed herself about her down to the
last possible detail; so that within a few months of the death of Miss
Fregelius she knew, as she thought, everything that could be known of
her life at Monksland. Moreover, she saw three different pictures of
her: one a somewhat prim photograph which Mr. Fregelius, her father,
possessed, taken when she was about twenty; another, a coloured drawing
made by Morris--who was rather clever at catching likenesses--of her as