t in it as she left the house, and began to glance
over them so that her lowered lids should hide her eyes from him.

She was his now, his for life: there could never again be any question
of sacrificing herself to Effie's welfare, or to any other abstract
conception of duty. Effie of course would not suffer; Anna would pay for
her bliss as a wife by redoubled devotion as a mother. Her scruples
were not overcome; but for the time their voices were drowned in the
tumultuous rumour of her happiness.

As she opened her letters she was conscious that Darrow's gaze was fixed
on her, and gradually it drew her eyes upward, and she drank deep of the
passionate tenderness in his. Then the blood rose to her face and she
felt again the desire to shield herself. She turned back to her letters
and her glance lit on an envelope inscribed in Owen's hand.

Her heart began to beat oppressively: she was in a mood when the
simplest things seemed ominous. What could Owen have to say to her? Only
the first page was covered, and it contained simply the announcement
that, in the company of a young compatriot who was studying at the Beaux
Arts, he had planned to leave for Spain the following evening.

"He hasn't seen her, then!" was Anna's instant thought; and her feeling
was a strange compound of humiliation and relief. The girl had kept her
word, lived up to the line of conduct she had set herself; and Anna
had failed in the same attempt. She did not reproach herself with
her failure; but she would have been happier if there had been less
discrepancy between her words to Sophy Viner and the act which had
followed them. It irritated her obscurely that the girl should have been
so much surer of her power to carry out her purpose...

Anna looked up and saw that Darrow's eyes were on the newspaper. He
seemed calm and secure, almost indifferent to her presence. "Will it
become a matter of course to him so soon?" she wondered with a twinge of
jealousy. She sat motionless, her eyes fixed on him, trying to make him
feel the attraction of her gaze as she felt his. It surprised and shamed
her to detect a new element in her love for him: a sort of suspicious
tyrannical tenderness that seemed to deprive it of all serenity. Finally
he looked up, his smile enveloped her, and she felt herself his in every
fibre, his so completely and inseparably that she saw the vanity of
imagining any other fate for herself.

To give herself a countenance she held ou