, and there
to the left on the westernmost edge of the hill lay the square stone
rectory, its windows open to the evening coolness, a white flutter of
pigeons round the dovecote on the side lawn, the gold of the August
wheat in the great cornfield showing against the heavy girdle of
oak-wood.

Robert stood gazing at it--the home consecrated by love, by effort, by
faith. The high alternations of intellectual and spiritual debate, the
strange emerging sense of deliverance, gave way to a most bitter human
pang of misery.

'_O God! My wife--my work!_'

... There was a sound of a voice calling--Catherine's voice calling for
him. He leant against the gate of the wood-path, struggling sternly with
himself. This was no simple matter of his own intellectual consistency
or happiness. Another's whole life was concerned. Any precipitate
speech, or hasty action, would be a crime. A man is bound above all
things to protect those who depend on him from his own immature or
revocable impulses. Not a word yet, till this sense of convulsion and
upheaval had passed away, and the mind was once more its own master.

He opened the gate and went towards her. She was strolling along the
path looking out for him, one delicate hand gathering up her long
evening dress--that very same black brocade she had worn in the old days
at Burwood--the other playing with their Dandie Dinmont puppy who was
leaping beside her. As she caught sight of him, there was the flashing
smile, the hurrying step. And he felt he could but just drag himself to
meet her.

'Robert, how long you have been! I thought you must have stayed to
dinner after all! And how tired you seem!'

'I had a long walk,' he said, catching her hand, as it slipped itself
under his arm, and clinging to it as though to a support. 'And I am
tired. There is no use whatever in denying it.'

His voice was light, but if it had not been so dark she must have been
startled by his face. As they went on towards the house, however, she
scolding him for over-walking, he won his battle with himself. He went
through the evening so that even Catherine's jealous eyes saw nothing
but extra fatigue. In the most desperate straits of life love is still
the fountain of all endurance, and if ever a man loved it was Robert
Elsmere.

But that night, as he lay sleepless in their quiet room, with the window
open to the stars and to the rising gusts of wind, which blew the petals
of the cluster-rose outside in d