Pausing for a moment, in which he sipped some milk, Crozier then
continued: "At last my leader died, and the see-saw of fortune began for
me; and a good deal of my sound timber was sawed into logs and made
into lumber to build some one else's fortune. When things were balancing
pretty easily, I married. It wasn't a sordid business to restore my
fortunes--I'll say that for myself; but it wasn't the thing to do, for
I wasn't secure in my position. I might go on the rocks; but was there
ever a gambler who didn't believe that he'd pull it off in a big way
next time, and that the turn of the wheel against him was only to tame
his spirit? Was there ever a gambler or sportsman of my class who didn't
talk about the 'law of chances,' on the basis that if red, as it were,
came up three times, black stood a fair chance of coming up the fourth
time? A silly enough conclusion; for on the law of chances there's no
reason why red shouldn't come up three hundred times; and so I found
that your run of bad luck may be so long that you cannot have a chance
to recover, and are out of it before the wheel turns in your favour. I
oughn't to have married."

His voice had changed in tone, his look become most grave, there was
something very like reverence in his face, and deprecating submission in
his eyes. His fingers fussed with the rug that covered his knees.

"God help the man that's afraid of his own wife!" remarked the Young
Doctor to himself, not erroneously reading the expression of Crozier's
face and the tone of his voice. "There's nothing so unnerving."

"No, I oughtn't to have done it," Crozier went on. "But I will say again
it wasn't a sordid marriage, though she had great expectations, but
not immediate; and she was a girl of great character. She was able and
brilliant and splendid and far-seeing, and she knew her own mind, and
was radiantly handsome."

Kitty Tynan almost sniffed. Through a whole fortnight she had, with a
courage and a right-mindedness quite remarkable, fought her infatuation
for this man, and as she fought she had imagined a hundred times what
his wife was like. She had pictured to herself a gossamer kind of woman,
delicate, and in contour like one of the fashion-plate figures she saw
in the picture-papers. She had imagined her with a wide, drooping hat,
with a soft, clinging gown, and a bodice like a great white handkerchief
crossed on her breast, holding a basket of flowers, while a King Charles
spaniel gamb