And now was he to believe that what he had been told about Sidney and
Jane Snowdon was misleading? Was the impossible no longer so? He almost
leapt from his chair when he heard that Sidney was the visitor with
whom his daughter had been having her private conversation. How came
they to make this appointment? There was something in Clara's voice
that set his nerves a-tremble. That night he could not sleep, and next
morning he went to work with a senile quiver in his body. For the first
time for more than two months he turned into a public-house on his way,
just to give himself a little 'tone.' The natural result of such a
tonic was to heighten the fever of his imagination; goodness knows how
far he had got in a drama of happiness before he threw off his coat and
settled to his day's labour.

Clara, in the meanwhile, suffered a corresponding agitation, more
penetrative in proportion to the finer substance of her nature. She did
not know until the scene was over how much vital force it had cost her;
when she took off the veil a fire danced before her eyes, and her limbs
ached and trembled as she lay down in the darkness. All night long she
was acting her part over and over; when she woke up, it was always at
the point where Sidney replied to her, 'But you are mistaken!'

Acting her part; yes, but a few hours had turned the make-believe into
something earnest enough. She could not now have met Kirkwood with the
self-possession of last evening. The fever that then sustained her was
much the same as she used to know before she had thoroughly accustomed
herself to appearing in front of an audience; it exalted all her
faculties, gifted her with a remarkable self-consciousness. It was all
very well as long as there was need of it, but why did it afflict her
in this torturing form now that she desired to rest, to think of what
she had gained, of what hope she might reasonably nourish? The purely
selfish project which, in her desperation, had seemed the only resource
remaining to her against a life of intolerable desolateness, was taking
hold upon her in a way she could not understand. Had she not already
made a discovery that surpassed all expectation? Sidney Kirkwood was
not bound to another woman; why could she not accept that as so much
clear gain, and deliberate as to her next step? She had been fully
prepared for the opposite state of things, prepared to strive against
any odds, to defy all probabilities, all restraints;