he was marrying, and he
did love somebody else. It had not, therefore, been a brilliant prospect
of bliss. Nevertheless, he had certainly hoped, with that vague kind of
hope in which Englishmen are prone to indulge, that things would "come
right" in some fashion, and that he and Helen would manage "to get on"
together. That they did not do so was an annoyance, but hardly a surprise
to him.

But to Helen there was a good deal of unexpected grief and mortification
of soul. She, at all events, had loved him; it was her own strength of
will, the fervour of her own lawless passion for him that had carried the
day, and had, in the end, made her his wife. And she had said to herself
that, once married to him, she would make him love her.

Alas, in love there is no such thing as compulsion! The heart that loves,
loves freely, spontaneously, unreasonably; and, where love is dead, there
neither entreaties nor prayers, nor yet a whole ocean of tears can serve
to re-awaken the frail blossom into life.

But Helen had made sure that, once absolutely her own, once irrevocably
separated from the girl whom instinct had taught her to regard as her
rival, Maurice would return to the old allegiance, and learn to love her
once more, as in days now long gone by.

A very short experience served to convince her of the contrary. Maurice
yawned too openly, was too evidently wearied and bored with her society,
too utterly indifferent to her sayings and her doings, for her to delude
herself long with the hope of regaining his affection. It was all the
same to him whatever she did. If she showered caresses upon him, he
submitted meekly, it is true, but with so evident a distaste to the
operation that she learnt to discontinue the kisses he cared for so
little; if she tried to amuse him with her conversation, he appeared to
be thinking of other things; if she gave her opinion, he hardly seemed to
listen to it. Only when they quarrelled did the slightest animation enter
into their conjugal relations; and it was almost better to quarrel than
to be at peace on such terms as these.

And then Helen got angry with him; angry and sore, wounded in her heart,
and hurt in her vanity. She said to herself that she had been ready to
become the best and most devoted of wives; to study his wishes, to defer
to his opinion, to surround him with loving attentions; but since he
would not have it so, then so much the worse for him. She would be no
model wife; no