ht when he wrote his letter to
Charmian. But how cold, how doubtful it seemed when clothed in words.

"Some can do that," said Mrs. Mansfield. "But, as I remember saying on
the night of Charmian's return from Algiers, Swinburne's food was
Putney. There is no rule. Follow your instinct."

She spoke with a sort of strong pressure. And again their eyes met.

"How well she understands me!" he thought. "Does she understand me too
well?"

He became hot, then cold, at the thought that perhaps she had divined
his lack of love for her daughter.

For marriage with Charmian, and three months of intimate intercourse
with her, had not made Claude love her. He admired her appearance. He
felt, sometimes strongly, her physical attraction. Her slim charm did
not leave him unmoved. Often he felt obliged to respect her energy, her
vitality. But anything that is not love is far away from love. In
marrying Charmian, Claude had made a secret sacrifice on the altar of
honor. He had done "the decent thing." Impulse had driven him into a
mistake and he had "paid for it" like a man without a word of complaint
to anyone. He had hoped earnestly, almost angrily, that love would be
suddenly born out of marriage, that thus his mistake would be cancelled,
his right dealing rewarded beautifully.

It had not been so. So he walked in the vast solitude of secrecy. He had
become a fine humbug, he who by nature was rather drastically sincere.
And he knew not how to face the future with hope, seeing no outlet from
the cage into which he had walked. To-night, as Mrs. Mansfield spoke,
with that peculiar firm pressure, he thought: "Perhaps I shall find
salvation in work." If she had divined the secret he could never tell
her perhaps she had seen the only way out. The true worker, the worker
who is great, uses the troubles, the sorrows, even the great tragedies
of life as material, combines them in a whole that is precious, lays
them as balm, or as bitter tonic on the wounds of the world. And so all
things in his life work together for good.

"May it be so with me!" was Claude's silent prayer that night.

When their guests were gone, Charmian sat down on a very low chair
before the wood fire--she insisted on wood instead of coal--in the first
drawing-room.

"Don't let us go to bed for a few minutes yet, Claude," she said. "You
aren't sleepy, are you?"

"Not a bit."

He sat down on the chintz-covered sofa near her.

"It went off well, didn't it?"