t was the artificiality of her life, the innumerable burdens of
civilization, which had brought her to this! Women were not the
weaklings they seemed, or believed themselves to be. For many of them,
probably for Kitty, a rude and simple life would mean not only fresh
mental but fresh physical strength. He had seen what women could endure,
for love's or patriotism's sake! Make but appeal to the spirit--the
proud and tameless spirit--and how the flesh answered! He knew that his
power with Kitty came largely from a certain stoicism, a certain
hardness, mingled, as he would prove to her, with a boundless devotion.
Let him carry it through--without fears--and so enlarge her being and
his own! And as to responsibilities beyond, as to their later lives--let
time take care of its own births. For the modern determinist of Cliffe's
type there <i>is</i> no responsibility. He waits on life, following where it
leads, rejoicing in each new feeling, each fresh reaction of
consciousness on experience, and so links his fatalist belief to that
Nietzsche doctrine of self-development at all costs, and the coming man,
in which Cliffe's thought anticipated the years.

* * * * *

Kitty meanwhile listened to his intermittent talk of Venice, or Bosnia,
with all its suggestions of new worlds and far horizons, and scarcely
said a word.

But through the background of the brain there floated with her, as with
him, a procession of unspoken thoughts. She had received three letters
from William. Immediately on his arrival he had tendered his
resignation. Lord Parham had asked him to suspend the matter for ten
days. Only the pressure of his friends, it seemed, and the consternation
of his party had wrung from Ashe a reluctant consent. Meanwhile, all
copies of the book had been bought up; the important newspapers had
readily lent themselves to the suppression of the affair; private wraths
had been dealt with by conciliatory lawyers; and in general a far more
complete hushing-up had been attained than Ashe had ever imagined
possible. There was no doubt infinite gossip in the country-houses. But
sympathy for Kitty in her grief, for Ashe himself, and Lady Tranmore,
had done much to keep it within bounds. The little Dean especially,
beloved of all the world, had been incessantly active on behalf of peace
and oblivion.

All this Kitty read or guessed from William's letters. After all, then,
the harm had not been so great! W