reason stood in awe, he fancied it must
be that her husband was dead. He forced himself to think it, and could
have smiled at the hurry of her coming, one, without even a maid: and
deeper down in him the devouring question burned which dreaded the
answer.

But of old, in Normandy, she had pledged herself to join him with no
delay when free, if ever free!

So now she was free.

One side of him glowed in illumination; the other was black as Winter
night; but light subdues darkness; and in a situation like Beauchamp's,
the blood is livelier than the prophetic mind.

'Why did you tell me to marry? What did that mean?' said he. 'Did you
wish me to be the one in chains? And you have come quite alone!--you
will give me an account of everything presently:--You are here! in
England! and what a welcome for you! You are cold.'

'I am warmly clad,' said Renee, suffering her hand to be drawn to his
breast at her arm's-length, not bending with it.

Alive to his own indirectness, he was conscious at once of the slight
sign of reservation, and said: 'Tell me...' and swerved sheer away from
his question: 'how is Madame d'Auffray?'

'Agnes? I left her at Tourdestelle,' said Renee.

'And Roland? He never writes to me.'

'Neither he nor I write much. He is at the military camp of instruction
in the North.'

'He will run over to us.'

'Do not expect it.'

'Why not?'

Renee sighed. 'We shall have to live longer than I look for...' she
stopped. 'Why do you ask me why not? He is fond of us both, and sorry
for us; but have you forgotten Roland that morning on the Adriatic?'

Beauchamp pressed her hand. The stroke of Then and Now rang in his
breast like a bell instead of a bounding heart. Something had stunned
his heart. He had no clear central feeling; he tried to gather it from
her touch, from his joy in beholding her and sitting with her alone,
from the grace of her figure, the wild sweetness of her eyes, and the
beloved foreign lips bewitching him with their exquisite French and
perfection of speech.

His nature was too prompt in responding to such a call on it for
resolute warmth.

'If I had been firmer then, or you one year older!' he said.

'That girl in Venice had no courage,' said Renee.

She raised her head and looked about the room.

Her instinct of love sounded her lover through, and felt the deficiency
or the contrariety in him, as surely as musical ears are pained by
a discord that they require no touchst