she addressed him timidly by name, or made some
trivial remark. He did not answer, as though in very truth he had been
the shadow of a man lying there. And the injustice of this silence
seemed to her so terrible. Was she not his wife? Had she not borne him
five, and toiled to keep him from that girl? Was it her fault if she had
made his life a hell with her jealousy, as he had cried out that morning
before he went for her, and was "put away"? He was her "man." It had
been her right--nay, more, her duty!

And still he lay there silent. From the narrow street where no traffic
passed, the cries of a coster and distant whistlings mounted through the
unwholesome air. Some sparrows in the eave were chirruping incessantly.
The little sandy house-cat had stolen in, and, crouched against the
doorpost, was fastening her eyes on the plate which, held the remnants of
the fish. The seamstress bowed her forehead to the flowers on the table;
unable any longer to bear the mystery of this silence, she wept. But the
dark figure on the bed only pressed his arms closer round his head, as
though there were within him a living death passing the speech of men.

The little sandy cat, creeping across the floor, fixed its claws in the
backbone of the fish, and drew it beneath the bed.

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE DUEL

Bianca did not see her husband after their return together from the Round
Pond. She dined out that evening, and in the morning avoided any
interview. When Hilary's luggage was brought down and the cab summoned,
she slipped up to take shelter in her room. Presently the sound of his
footsteps coming along the passage stopped outside her door. He tapped.
She did not answer.

Good-bye would be a mockery! Let him go with the words unsaid! And as
though the thought had found its way through the closed door, she heard
his footsteps recede again. She saw him presently go out to the cab with
his head bent down, saw him stoop and pat Miranda. Hot tears sprang into
her eyes. She heard the cab-wheels roll away.

The heart is like the face of an Eastern woman--warm and glowing, behind
swathe on swathe of fabric. At each fresh touch from the fingers of
Life, some new corner, some hidden curve or angle, comes into view, to be
seen last of all perhaps never to be seen by the one who owns them.

When the cab had driven away there came into Bianca's heart a sense of
the irreparable, and, mysteriously entwined with that ar