will call the servants from the annex to provide
you both with refreshment until I join you a little later." Satisfied
from Hooker's manner that they knew nothing of his later interview with
Pinckney, he turned away and ascended to his own room.

There he threw himself into an armchair by the dim light of a single
candle as if to reflect. But he was conscious, even then, of his own
calmness and want of excitement, and that no reflection was necessary.
What he had done and what he intended to do was quite clear, there was
no alternative suggested or to be even sought after. He had that sense
of relief which comes with the climax of all great struggles, even of
defeat.

He had never known before how hopeless and continuous had been that
struggle until now it was over. He had no fear of tomorrow, he would
meet it as he had to-day, with the same singular consciousness of being
equal to the occasion. There was even no necessity of preparation for
it; his will, leaving his fortune to his wife,--which seemed a slight
thing now in this greater separation,--was already in his safe in San
Francisco, his pistols were in the next room. He was even slightly
disturbed by his own insensibility, and passed into his wife's bedroom
partly in the hope of disturbing his serenity by some memento of their
past. There was no disorder of flight--everything was in its place,
except the drawer of her desk, which was still open, as if she had taken
something from it as an afterthought. There were letters and papers
there, some of his own and some in Captain Pinckney's handwriting. It
did not occur to him to look at them--even to justify himself, or excuse
her. He knew that his hatred of Captain Pinckney was not so much that he
believed him her lover, as his sudden conviction that she was like him!
He was the male of her species--a being antagonistic to himself, whom
he could fight, and crush, and revenge himself upon. But most of all he
loathed his past, not on account of her, but of his own weakness that
had made him her dupe and a misunderstood man to his friends. He had
been derelict of duty in his unselfish devotion to her; he had stifled
his ambition, and underrated his own possibilities. No wonder that
others had accepted him at his own valuation. Clarence Brant was a
modest man, but the egotism of modesty is more fatal than that of
pretension, for it has the haunting consciousness of superior virtue.

He re-entered his own room and again