; but she
raised her eyebrows patiently.

"It is a fact, and the fact is a part of me. Besides, there's
Lancelot."

"Oh," he said, "I don't forget him. You needn't think it. He is a
symbol of you--and almost an emanation. Put it like this, that what
you might have been, he is."

"Oh," said she, "do you want me to be different?"

He laughed. "Bless you, no. But I like to see what you gave up to be
made woman. And I see it in your boy."

She was impelled to say what she said next by his words, which excited
her. "I can't tell you--and perhaps I ought not--how happy you make me
by loving Lancelot. I love him so very much--and James never has. I
can't make out why; but it was so from the beginning. That was the
first thing which made me unhappy in my life at home. It was the
beginning of everything. He seemed to lose interest in me when he
found me so devoted."

Urquhart said nothing immediately. Then he spoke slowly. "Macartney is
uneasy with boys because he's uneasy with himself. He is only really
interested in one thing, and he can see that they are obviously
uninterested in it."

"You mean--?" she began, and did not finish.

"I do," said Urquhart. "Most men are like that at bottom--only some of
us can impose ourselves upon our neighbours more easily than he can.
Half the marriages of the world break on that rock, and the other half
on idleness."

She then confessed. "Do you know what I believe in my heart? I believe
that James's eyeglass stands in his way with Lancelot--as it certainly
did with me."

"I think you are right there," he agreed. "But you must allow for it.
He's very uncertain of his foothold, and that's his war armour."

She was more tolerant of James after that conversation, and less
mutinous against her lot. She wondered, of course, what was to become
of them, how long she could hold him at arms' length, how she could
bring herself to unsay what had been said in the dark of Martley
Thicket. But she had boundless faith in Urquhart, and knew, among
other things, that any request she made him would be made easy for
her.

But when, at the end of June, he broached to her his great scheme, she
was brought face to face with the situation, and had to ask herself,
could she be trusted? That he could she knew very well.

He had a project for a month or six weeks in Norway. He had hinted at
it when she was at Martley, but now it was broached. He didn't
disguise it that his interest lay wholly in h