ntle answer of that familiar voice moved him.
He assured her hurriedly, and without looking at her, that he was not
angry. He then managed to ask her, in a clumsy, constrained way, if
she had had a pleasant journey, and seen many interesting sights. She
spoke of a few places that she had visited, and so the time passed till
he withdrew to take his place at one of the levers which pulled round
the screw.

Forgotten her voice! Indeed, he had not forgotten her voice, as his
bitterness showed. But though in the heat of the moment he had
reproached her keenly, his second mood was a far more tender one--that
which could regard her renunciation of such as he as her glory and her
privilege, his own fidelity notwithstanding. He could have declared
with a contemporary poet--

"If I forget,
The salt creek may forget the ocean;
If I forget
The heart whence flows my heart's bright motion,
May I sink meanlier than the worst
Abandoned, outcast, crushed, accurst,
If I forget.

"Though you forget,
No word of mine shall mar your pleasure;
Though you forget,
You filled my barren life with treasure,
You may withdraw the gift you gave;
You still are queen, I still am slave,
Though you forget."

She had tears in her eyes at the thought that she could not remind him
of what he ought to have remembered; that not herself but the pressure
of events had dissipated the dreams of their early youth. Grace was
thus unexpectedly worsted in her encounter with her old friend. She
had opened the window with a faint sense of triumph, but he had turned
it into sadness; she did not quite comprehend the reason why. In truth
it was because she was not cruel enough in her cruelty. If you have to
use the knife, use it, say the great surgeons; and for her own peace
Grace should have contemned Winterborne thoroughly or not at all. As
it was, on closing the window an indescribable, some might have said
dangerous, pity quavered in her bosom for him.

Presently her husband entered the room, and told her what a wonderful
sunset there was to be seen.

"I have not noticed it. But I have seen somebody out there that we
know," she replied, looking into the court.

Fitzpiers followed the direction of her eyes, and said he did not
recognize anybody.

"Why, Mr. Winterborne--there he is, cider-making. He combines that
with his other business, you know."