e are simply inevitable results of irrevocable causes, and no
place for repentance or restitution. And yet you help her, not as
you meant to, and not now; but ah, you help her!"

"So long as I do that----" murmured Rainham, with a deep inhalation,
closing his eyes wearily, in a manner which revealed how severely
the intimate strain of conversation had told upon him.

Oswyn waited a little longer, in half expectation of his further
utterance; but Rainham made no sign, lay quite motionless and
hushed, his hands clasped outside of the counterpane as if already
in the imitation of death; then the other rose and made a quiet
exit, imagining that his friend slept, or would soon sleep.

And yet actually, in spite of the extreme physical weariness which
had gradually stolen over him, dulling his senses, so that he was
hardly conscious of Oswyn's departure, or of the subdued entrance of
the nurse, who had been discreetly waiting for it, Rainham's mind
was still keenly vigilant; and it was in the relief of a certain new
lucidity, an almost hieratic calm, that he reviewed that recent
interview, in which he had so deliberately unburdened himself. It
seemed as if, in his great weakness, the ache of his old desire, his
fever of longing, bad suddenly left him, giving place (as though the
literal wasting away of his body had really given freer access to
that pure spirit, its prisoner), to a love now altogether purged of
passion, and become strangely tolerable and sweet.

CHAPTER XXX

If Philip Rainham's name, during that long, hard winter and
ungracious spring--near the close of which he turned his face, with
the least little sigh of regret, to the wall--was not often
mentioned in the house in Parton Street, at whose door he had
formerly knocked so often, it must not be supposed that by its
occupants it had been in any way forgotten. He had not committed the
discourtesy of leaving Lady Garnett's note unanswered; on the
contrary, he had answered it both promptly and--as it seemed to
him--well, in a letter which was certainly diplomatic, suggesting as
it did--at least, to Mary Masters, to whom it had been shown--that
he was on the point of an immediate flight South.

Whether the elder lady was equally deceived by his ambiguous
phrases, it was not so easy to declare. She had, at this time less
than ever, the mode of persons who wear their hearts upon their
sleeves; her mask of half-cynical good-humour was constantly up; and