ould not make the path of his
spiritual intuitive love waver, and they produced no effect at all
against his direct material passion. To destroy the prime beautiful
illusion, something must take place which would upset the mistaken
assumption from a point beyond it, so to say. As for the earthly part of
his love, it was so strong that it might well stand alone, even if the
other should disappear altogether.

Then came honour, and the semi-religious morality of the man, defending
the woman against him, for the sake of the angel he saw through her.
Chief of all, in her defence, stood his own conviction that she did not
love him, and never would, nor ever could. To all intents and purposes,
too, he had been her father's friend, though between the two men there
had been little but the similarity of their gloomy characters. It was
the will of the material man to be governed, and as no outward influence
set it in motion, it remained inert, in unstable equilibrium, as a vast
boulder may lie for ages on the very edge of a precipice, ready but not
inclined to fall. There was fatality in its stillness, and in the
certainty that if moved it must crash through everything it met.

Gloria had not the least understanding of the real man. She thought
about him often during the months which followed his return, and a week
rarely passed in which she did not see him two or three times. Her
thoughts of him were too ignorant to be confused. She was conscious,
rather than aware, that he loved her, but it seemed quite natural to
her, at her age, that he should never express his love by any word or
deed.

But she compared him with her husband, innocently and unconsciously, in
matters where comparison was almost unavoidable. His leonine strength of
body impressed her strongly, and she felt his presence in the room,
even when she was not looking at him. Reanda was physically a weak and
nervous man. When he was painting, the movements of his hand seemed to
be independent of his will and guided by a superior unseen power, rather
than directed by his judgment and will. Paul Griggs never made the
slightest movement which did not strike Gloria as the expression of his
will to accomplish something. He was wonderfully skilful with his hands.
Whatever he meant to do, his fingers did, forthwith, unhesitatingly. His
mental processes were similar, so far as she could see. If she asked him
a question, he answered it categorically and clearly, if he were a