ble older."

Honora was trembling from head to foot, and her hands were cold.

"I've got her picture in there, if ye'd like to look at it," he said,
after a while.

"Oh, no!" she cried. "Oh, no!"

"Well, I don't know as I blame you." He sat down again and began to
whittle. "Funny thing, chance," he remarked; "who'd a thought I should
have owned that there hoss, and he should have come around here to ride
it?"

She tried to speak, but she could not. The hideous imperturbability
of the man's hatred sickened her. And her husband! The chips fell in
silence until a noise on the road caused them to look up. Chiltern was
coming back. She glanced again at the farmer, but his face was equally
incapable, or equally unwilling, to express regret. Chiltern rode into
the dooryard. The blood from the scratch on his forehead had crossed his
temple and run in a jagged line down his cheek, his very hair (as she
had sometimes seen it) was damp with perspiration, blacker, kinkier; his
eyes hard, reckless, bloodshot. So, in the past, must he have emerged
from dozens of such wilful, brutal contests with man and beast. He had
beaten the sweat-stained horse (temporarily--such was the impression
Honora received), but she knew that he would like to have killed it for
its opposition.

"Give me my hat, will you?" he cried to the farmer.

To her surprise the man obeyed. Chiltern leaped to the ground.

"What do you want for him?" he demanded.

"I'll take five hundred dollars."

"Bring him over in the morning," said Chiltern, curtly.

They rode homeward in silence. Honora had not been able to raise her
voice against the purchase, and she seemed powerless now to warn her
husband of the man's enmity. She was thinking, rather, of the horror of
the tragedy written on the farmer's face, to which he had given her the
key: Hugh Chiltern, to whom she had intrusted her life and granted her
all, had done this thing, ruthlessly, even as he had satisfied to-day
his unbridled cravings in maltreating a horse! And she thought of that
other woman, on whose picture she had refused to look. What was the
essential difference between that woman and herself? He had wanted them
both, he had taken them both for his pleasure, heedless of the pain
he might cause to others and to them. For her, perhaps, the higher
organism, had been reserved the higher torture. She did not know. The
vision of the girl in the outer darkness reserved for castaways was
terrible.