sharpness he divined the meaning of
her muffled speech. Throughout that evening, and for hours at a time
throughout the days which followed, he sat by her bedside, ministering
to her wants with clumsy eagerness. Cassandra was for the time being
too intensely absorbed with the tragedy of her own life to feel any
active interest in what was passing before her eyes, but subconsciously
the various pictures photographed themselves on her mind. Bernard
smiling, indifferent to snubs, persuading his mother to eat, to swallow
her medicine; Bernard, suppressing yawns, sitting up to the small hours
to be "at hand"; Bernard holding the cold hand between his own warm
palms, and by force of his strong electric current soothing the patient
to sleep. He was not _trying_ to be patient; he _was_ patient, out of
pure loving kindness and compassion. Slowly, gradually, the knowledge
penetrated into Cassandra's brain, and she asked herself sadly wherein
she had failed, that this quality of tenderness was so lacking towards
herself! For some months after their marriage Bernard had been the most
ardent of lovers, then passion waned, and with no appreciable second
stage, neglect had taken its place. She had been bitterly surprised,
bitterly wounded, but what had she done to recapture her husband's love,
and turn it into a more enduring form? Had she once realised, as Grizel
Beverley had realised in the midst of her bridal joy, that love is a
tender plant, which can only preserve its fragrance when tended with
unremitting care? Cassandra looked back and saw herself retiring into a
chilly reserve, meeting neglect with neglect, indifference with
indifference, disdaining to invite a love which was not voluntarily
bestowed. It had seemed, at the time, the only way of preserving her
dignity, but as she watched her husband by his mother's bedside, there
came a sudden realisation that if she had thought less of pride, and
more of love, the barrenness of their joint lives might have been
averted. If she had used her woman's wiles,--smiled, cajoled, even in
those early days, wept a few,--just a few, pretty, becoming tears, to
enforce her need, the barrier would never have grown so high: Cassandra
had been accustomed to put all the blame on her husband's shoulders, and
to congratulate herself on being immaculately free from blame; never
till this moment had she realised that to a man of the Squire's
temperament, her attitude of chill detachment,