the
colonel pretending to read and Jeff with his elbows on the table, his
head resting on his hands. How was he to finish what he had begun? For
she hated him, he believed, with a childish hatred of the discomfort he
had brought her. If there were some hot betrayal of the blood that had
driven her to Reardon he almost thought, despite Addington and its
honesties and honours, he would not lift his hand to keep her. Addington
was very strong in him that night, the old decent loyalties to the
edifice men and women have built up to protect themselves from the beast
in them. Yet how would it have stood the assault of honest passion,
sheer human longing knocking at its walls? If she could but love a man
at last! but this was no more love than the puerile effort of a meagre
discontent to make itself more safe, more closely cherished, more
luxuriously served.

"Father," said he at last, breaking the silence where the clock ticked
and the fire stirred.

"Yes," said the colonel. He did not put down his book or move his finger
on it. He meant, to the last line of precaution, to invite Jeff's
confidence.

"Whatever she does," said Jeff, "I'm to blame for it."

"Don't blame yourself any more," the colonel said. "We won't blame
anybody."

He did not even venture to ask what Esther would be likely to do.

"I don't understand--" said Jeff, and then paused and the sentence was
never finished. But what he did not understand was the old problem: how
accountability could be exacted from the irresponsible, how an ascetic
loyalty to law could be demanded of a woman who was nothing but a sweet
bouquet of primitive impulses, flowered out of youth and natural
appetites. He saw what she was giving up with Reardon: luxury, a kindly
and absolutely honest devotion. If she went to him it would be to what
she called happiness. If he kept her out of the radius of disapproval,
she might never feel a shadow of regret. But Reardon would feel the
shadow. Jeff knew him well enough to believe that. It would be the old
question of revolt against the edifice men have built. You thought you
could storm it, and it would capitulate; but when the winter rigours
came, when passion died and self got shrunken to a meagre thing, you
would seek the shelter of even that cold courtyard.

"Yes," he said aloud, "I've got to do it."

All that evening they sat silent, the four of them, as if waiting for an
arrival, an event. At eleven Anne came in.

"I've been