the broad, paved spaces empty.

For this reason Chip's eye caught the more quickly at the other end of
the terrace the figures of a man and a woman who stood back from the
line of gazers. They were almost in profile toward himself, the man's
erect, stately form allowing the fact that a woman was clinging to his
arm to be just perceptible. It required no such movement as that of a
few minutes later--a movement by which the woman came more fully into
view--for Chip to recognize Edith.

_His_ Edith, _his wife_, clinging to another man's arm, clinging to her
husband's arm, clinging to the arm of a husband who was not himself,
dependent on him, supported by him, possessed by him, coming and going
with him, living and eating with him, bearing him children, sharing with
him whatever was most intimate, directed by him and dominated by
him!--yet, all the while, in everything that could make two beings one
except that stroke of the pen called law, _his wife_!

How had it come about? What had he done, what had she done, to make this
hideous topsyturvydom a fact? He put his hand to his forehead like a man
dazed; but he withdrew it quickly. His forehead was wet and clammy. He
was shaken, transpierced. He saw now that, in all the three years since
he had heard she was married, he hadn't really known it. Perhaps it was
his imagination that was at fault--perhaps his incapacity for believing
what wasn't under his very eyes--perhaps his own success in keeping the
dreadful fact at a distance--_but he hadn't really known it_. Nothing
could have brought it home to him like this--this glimpse of her
intimate association with the other man, and her dependence upon him.

His first impulse was to get out of their sight, to hide, to find some
place where he could grasp the appalling fact in silence and seclusion.
Second thoughts reminded him that there was a situation to be faced and
that he might as well face it now as at any other time. What sort of
situation it would be he couldn't guess; but he was sure that behind the
immobile mask of the other man's grave face there was something that
would be worth the penetration. He would give him a chance. He would go
forward to meet them. No, he wouldn't go forward to meet them; he would
wait for them where he stood. No, he wouldn't wait for them where he
stood; he would slip into the little rotunda close beside him--a little
rotunda generally occupied by motherly Bernese women, but which for the