uffering men and women beneath him,
forgiving, tolerating all, because he understood all. He who saw life so
whole, who knew the hidden motives and far-off causes of human action,
could make allowances for everything. There was something divine in his
literary charity. What matter, then, if he now and then looked into some
girl's expressive face, and found out the secret she thought she was
hiding so cleverly from everybody,--if he knew the sources of
So-and-so's mysterious illness, which had puzzled the doctors so long?
And what if he had obtained something more than a passing glimpse into
the nature of the woman who had trusted him? It would have been base,
impossible, in any other man, of course: the impersonal point of view,
you see, made all the difference.

CHAPTER XX

From that afternoon Wyndham kept away from Chelsea Gardens; in fact, he
had left town. To do him justice, he honestly thought he was doing "the
cleverest thing" for Audrey in leaving her--to think. It would have been
the cleverest thing if he could have kept away altogether; but as long
as she had the certainty of his return, it was about the stupidest. If
he had stayed, they would have resumed their ordinary relations; all
might have blown over like a mood, and whatever he knew about her,
Audrey herself would never have known it. As it was, he had emphasised
the situation by going. And what was more, he had thrown Audrey back on
her uninteresting self--the very worst company she could have had at
present. She had been used to seeing him almost daily through a whole
winter; he had made her dependent on his society for all her interests
and pleasures; and when she was suddenly deprived of it, instead of
being able to think, she spent her time in miserable longing. She could
not think and feel at the same time. Feeling such as hers was
incompatible with any form of thinking; it was feeling in a vacuum--the
most dangerous kind of all. The emptiness of her life, now that Wyndham
was gone, made her say to herself that she could bear anything--anything
but that. It made her realise what the years, the long unspeakable
years, would be like when she had given him up. She looked behind and
around her, and there were the grey levels of ordinary existence; she
looked below her, and there was the deep; she was going into the
darkness of it, swiftly, helplessly, blown on by the wind of vanity. She
saw no darkness for the light before her--a nebulous lig