l memories, that which one would
give one's best years to forget. With a fortitude beyond description she
had faced it, gently, quietly, but firmly faced it--firmly, because she
had to be firm in keeping him within those bounds the invasion of
which would have killed her. And after the first struggle with his
unchangeable brutality it had been easier: for into his degenerate brain
there had come a faint understanding of the real situation and of her.
He had kept his side of the gulf, but gloating on this touch between the
old luxurious, indulgent life, with its refined vices, and this present
coarse, hard life, where pleasures were few and gross. The free Northern
life of toil and hardship had not refined him. He greedily hung over
this treasure, which was not for his spending, yet was his own--as
though in a bank he had hoards of money which he might not withdraw.

So the years had gone on, with their recurrent dreaded anniversaries,
carrying misery almost too great to be borne by this woman mated to the
loathed phantom of a sad, dead life; and when this black day of each
year was over, for a few days afterwards she went nowhere, was seen
by none. Yet, when she did appear again, it was with her old laughing
manner, her cheerful and teasing words, her quick response to the
emotions of others.

So it had gone till Varley had come to follow the open air life for four
months, after a heavy illness due to blood-poisoning got in his surgical
work in London. She had been able to live her life without too great a
struggle till he came. Other men had flattered her vanity, had given her
a sense of power, had made her understand her possibilities, but nothing
more--nothing of what Varley brought with him. And before three months
had gone, she knew that no man had ever interested her as Varley had
done. Ten years before, she would not have appreciated or understood
him, this intellectual, clean-shaven, rigidly abstemious man, whose
pleasures belonged to the fishing-rod and the gun and the horse, and
who had come to be so great a friend of him who had been her best
friend--Father Bourassa. Father Bourassa had come to know the truth--not
from her, for she had ever been a Protestant, but from her husband, who,
Catholic by birth and a renegade from all religion, had had a moment of
spurious emotion, when he went and confessed to Father Bourassa and
got absolution, pleading for the priest's care of his wife. Afterwards
Father Bourassa