oming out. Half-past nine! At ten o'clock,
and not before, he would walk past her house. To have this something to
look forward to, however furtive and barren, helped. But on a Saturday
night there would be no sitting at the House. Cramier would be at home;
or they would both be out; or perhaps have gone down to their river
cottage. Cramier! What cruel demon had presided over that marring of
her life! Why had he never met her till after she had bound herself to
this man! From a negative contempt for one who was either not sensitive
enough to recognize that his marriage was a failure, or not chivalrous
enough to make that failure bear as little hardly as possible on his
wife, he had come already to jealous hatred as of a monster. To be face
to face with Cramier in a mortal conflict could alone have satisfied his
feeling. . . . Yet he was a young man by nature gentle!

His heart beat desperately as he approached that street--one of those
little old streets, so beautiful, that belonged to a vanished London. It
was very narrow, there was no shelter; and he thought confusedly of what
he could say, if met in this remote backwater that led nowhere. He would
tell some lie, no doubt. Lies would now be his daily business. Lies and
hatred, those violent things of life, would come to seem quite natural,
in the violence of his love.

He stood a moment, hesitating, by the rails of the old church. Black,
white-veined, with shadowy summits, in that half darkness, it was like
some gigantic vision. Mystery itself seemed modelled there. He turned
and walked quickly down the street close to the houses on the further
side. The windows of her house were lighted! So, she was not away! Dim
light in the dining-room, lights in the room above--her bedroom,
doubtless. Was there no way to bring her to the window, no way his
spirit could climb up there and beckon hers out to him? Perhaps she was
not there, perhaps it was but a servant taking up hot water. He was at
the end of the street by now, but to leave without once more passing was
impossible. And this time he went slowly, his head down, feigning
abstraction, grudging every inch of pavement, and all the time furtively
searching that window with the light behind the curtains. Nothing! Once
more he was close to the railings of the church, and once more could not
bring himself to go away. In the little, close, deserted street, not a
soul was moving, not even a cat or dog;