inutes.
Besides . . ." Returning steps sounded without, and Lenox held up his
hand.

"That's enough," he said decisively. "Here's Dick. You're simply
telling me, in roundabout language, that you intend to take the bit
between your teeth. Well, I intend to keep a firm hold on the reins
for your sake as much as my own."

She flushed hotly.

"_Mon Dieu_, what a detestable similie!"

"Quite so. But it expresses the position. If you will make it a case
of mastery, what else can a man do?"

And as Richardson entered from the dining-room, Lenox went out; by way
of the verandah into his study.

CHAPTER XXXI.

"When the fight begins within himself,
The man's worth something."
--Browning.

Lenox, back at his writing-table, automatically took up his pen. But
five minutes later he still sat thus, looking straight ahead of him
into a future darkened by the encroaching shadow of opium, and
complicated by this new factor of open discord, which--apart from the
pain of finding division, where he had looked for unity--set all his
nerves on edge.

Hitherto, his distaste for friction, coupled with an almost unlimited
power of endurance, had inclined him to let matters slide. But now his
conscience--the accusing, spiritual thing that was himself--warned him
that if marriage meant compromise, it also meant responsibility; that
having been goaded into decisive speech, he stood pledged to decisive
action, for her sake, even more than for his own. Yet, at the moment,
he felt physically and mentally unfit to grapple with the complex
situation, hampered as he was by the experience of all that may spring
from one false move, one instant of unguarded speech; and the knowledge
that his insight, his judgment, were clouded by the insomnia, grinding
headache, and renewed wrestling with a power stronger than his will.
For there was no evading the truth, that, in the past weeks, the drug
had gained fresh hold upon him; had resuscitated the old paralysing
pessimism and dread of defeat, so that he asked himself bitterly what
right had he to sit in judgment upon any one, least of all upon the
dear woman who was the core and mainspring of his life?

Yet, fit or unfit, the need for action, for the rightful assertion of
authority, remained. He laid down his pen, planted an elbow on the
table, and covered his eyes; struggling for clear unprejudiced thought;
tormented by the consciousness of a certain small box hidden