ccount to those
three people. He was looking at Mrs Anthony as unabashed as the
proverbial cat looking at a king. Mrs Anthony glanced at him. She did
not move, gripped by an inexplicable premonition. She had arrived at
the very limit of her endurance as the object of Anthony's magnanimity;
she was the prey of an intuitive dread of she did not know what
mysterious influence; she felt herself being pushed back into that
solitude, that moral loneliness, which had made all her life
intolerable. And then, in that close communion established again with
Anthony, she felt--as on that night in the garden--the force of his
personal fascination. The passive quietness with which she looked at
him gave her the appearance of a person bewitched--or, say, mesmerically
put to sleep--beyond any notion of her surroundings.

After telling Mr Powell not to go away the captain remained silent.
Suddenly Mrs Anthony pushed back her loose hair with a decisive gesture
of her arms and moved still nearer to him. "Here's papa up yet," she
said, but she did not look towards Mr Smith. "Why is it? And you? I
can't go on like this, Roderick--between you two. Don't."

Anthony interrupted her as if something had untied his tongue.

"Oh yes. Here's your father. And ... Why not. Perhaps it is just as
well you came out. Between us two? Is that it? I won't pretend I
don't understand. I am not blind. But I can't fight any longer for
what I haven't got. I don't know what you imagine has happened.
Something has though. Only you needn't be afraid. No shadow can touch
you--because I give up. I can't say we had much talk about it, your
father and I, but, the long and the short of it is, that I must learn to
live without you--which I have told you was impossible. I was speaking
the truth. But I have done fighting, or waiting, or hoping. Yes. You
shall go."

At this point Mr Powell who (he confessed to me) was listening with
uncomprehending awe, heard behind his back a triumphant chuckling sound.
It gave him the shudders, he said, to mention it now; but at the time,
except for another chill down the spine, it had not the power to destroy
his absorption in the scene before his eyes, and before his ears too,
because just then Captain Anthony raised his voice grimly. Perhaps he
too had heard the chuckle of the old man.

"Your father has found an argument which makes me pause, if it does not
convince me. No! I can't answer it. I--I d