letely. If, in those first months, she had permitted any
of the ardour, any of the fascination of her nature to shine upon him,
she might have led him by a silken thread in whatever direction she
pleased. But three factors had precluded this--her youth, her
inexperience, her entire ignorance of artifice. In her primary
encounter with the realities of life, she had lost her strongest
weapon--her frank, unswerving fearlessness; and in lieu of this she
had, in the moment of first panic, seized upon the nearest substitute,
and had wrapped herself in an armour of reserve.

And on this armour, the weapons of Milbanke's love had been turned
aside. There had been no scenes, no harassing disillusionment; but
gradually, inevitably his original attitude with regard to her--his shy
reticence, his uncertainty, as in the presence of some incomprehensible
quality--had returned. He had slowly but surely withdrawn into himself,
turning with a pathetic eagerness to the interests that had previously
usurped his thoughts. With the nervous sensitiveness that warred
continuously with his matter-of-fact precision, he became uncomfortably
conscious of occupying a false position, of having made an
indisputable--almost a ridiculous--mistake; and he had taken a blind
leap towards the quarter in which he believed compensation to lie.
While Clodagh, vaguely divining this--vaguely remorseful, of what she
scarcely knew--had held her own enthusiasms more rigidly in check,
schooling herself into acquiescence with every impersonal suggestion
that he chose to make.

From this had arisen the pursuit of the antique in whatever corner of
Europe--and at whatever season of the year--circumstances might decree.
To Clodagh, the pilgrimages had seemed unutterably wearisome and
unutterably foolish; but there is a great capacity for silent endurance
in the Irish nature. Quick-blooded though it may be, it possesses that
strong fatalistic instinct that accepts without question the decree of
the gods. The spirit of revolt is not lacking in it; but it requires a
given atmosphere--a given sequence of events--to bring it into
activity. At two-and-twenty Clodagh was weary of her husband, of
herself, of her life. But precisely as her father had fretted out his
existence in the quiet monotony of Orristown, she had accepted her fate
without thought of question.

In the second year, when they had travelled to England with Nance,
Milbanke had suggested a visit to Ireland,