ination always turned back); but if it were
a mere link in a chain of similar experiments, the thought of it
dishonoured her whole past...

Effie, in the interregnum between governesses, had been given leave to
dine downstairs; and Anna, on the evening of Darrow's return, kept the
little girl with her till long after the nurse had signalled from
the drawing-room door. When at length she had been carried off, Anna
proposed a game of cards, and after this diversion had drawn to its
languid close she said good-night to Darrow and followed Madame de
Chantelle upstairs. But Madame de Chantelle never sat up late, and the
second evening, with the amiably implied intention of leaving Anna and
Darrow to themselves, she took an earlier leave of them than usual.

Anna sat silent, listening to her small stiff steps as they minced down
the hall and died out in the distance. Madame de Chantelle had broken
her wooden embroidery frame, and Darrow, having offered to repair it,
had drawn his chair up to a table that held a lamp. Anna watched him
as he sat with bent head and knitted brows, trying to fit together
the disjoined pieces. The sight of him, so tranquilly absorbed in
this trifling business, seemed to give to the quiet room a perfume of
intimacy, to fill it with a sense of sweet familiar habit; and it came
over her again that she knew nothing of the inner thoughts of this man
who was sitting by her as a husband might. The lamplight fell on his
white forehead, on the healthy brown of his cheek, the backs of his thin
sunburnt hands. As she watched the hands her sense of them became as
vivid as a touch, and she said to herself: "That other woman has sat
and watched him as I am doing. She has known him as I have never known
him...Perhaps he is thinking of that now. Or perhaps he has forgotten
it all as completely as I have forgotten everything that happened to me
before he came..."

He looked young, active, stored with strength and energy; not the man
for vain repinings or long memories. She wondered what she had to hold
or satisfy him. He loved her now; she had no doubt of that; but how
could she hope to keep him? They were so nearly of an age that already
she felt herself his senior. As yet the difference was not visible;
outwardly at least they were matched; but ill-health or unhappiness
would soon do away with this equality. She thought with a pang of
bitterness: "He won't grow any older because he doesn't feel things; and
bec