ing the rougher difficulties. Her attitude now
surprised him, made him uneasy.

Yet he knew his own inability to resist her. He knew that she spoke on
the side of his secret hope. He knew that a debate which had long gone
on within himself, to himself unavowed, had at length to find its
plain-spoken issue.

His passion for Thyrza was dead; he even wondered how it could ever
have been so violent. It seemed to him that he scarcely knew her; could
he not count on his fingers the number of times that he had seen her?
So much had intervened between him and her, between himself as he was
then and his present self. It was with apprehension that he thought of
marrying her. He knew what miseries had again and again resulted from
marriages such as this, and he feared for her quite as much as for
himself. For there was no more passion.

Neither on her side, it seemed. Was not Mrs. Ormonde right? Was it not
to incur a wholly needless risk? And suppose the risk were found to be
an imaginary one, what was the profit likely to be, to each of them?

But as often as he accepted what he held to be the common sense of the
case, something unsettled him again. The one passion of his life had
been for Thyrza. He called it dead; does not one mourn over such a
death? He would not have recourse to the old dishonesty, and say that
his love had been folly. Was it not rather the one golden memory he
had? Was it not of infinite significance?

One loves a woman madly, and she gives proof of such unworthiness that
love is killed. Why, even then the dead thing was inestimably precious;
one would not forget it. And Thyrza was no woman of this kind. She had
developed since he knew her; Mrs. Ormonde spoke of her as few can be
justly spoken of. Was it good to let the love for such a woman pass
away, when perchance the sight of her would revive it and make it
lasting?

The stars and the night wind and the breaking of the sea--the sea which
Thyrza loved--spoke to him. Could he not understand their language?...

On Monday morning he took the train to London, thence northwards. A
visit to the Newthorpes after two years of absence was natural enough.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE TRUTH

Mrs. Ormonde was successful, but success did not bring her unmixed
content. She was persuaded that what she had done was wholly prudent,
that in years to come she would look back on this chapter of her life
with satisfaction. Yet for the present she could not get ri