eps before the
victorious onrush of the dawn; and in those quiet, lamp-lit hours he
asked himself despairingly why he had been in such haste to marry.

One consolation lay in the fact that Toni herself had not the slightest
idea that her marriage was anything but a success. She did not know that
her idleness, her incessant chatter about trivial things, her constant
interruptions, her unauthorized intrusions into the privacy of his
working hours, worried him almost beyond measure.

Bubbling over with youth and joy, she had no eyes for the look of
strain, of weariness on another's face; and to her it seemed quite right
that her husband should write and study while she danced through the
summer hours as she would.

He liked his work, she supposed; and in Toni's world it was the usual
thing for the men to work to support their wives. But that the wives had
equal duties, that it was theirs to share the burdens of the men's
spiritual and mental labour, she had, as yet, no idea.

"At least," said Owen wearily to himself, as he rose stiffly from his
chair and moved to the oriel window to watch the marvel of the dawn, "at
least I have made her happy; and as for me, it's my own mistake, and I
must bear the consequences!"

With which philosophical reflection he extinguished the lamp and went
slowly upstairs to bed.

CHAPTER XIII

In after days Toni always looked back to the afternoon of the Vicarage
Bazaar as the occasion on which her eyes were opened ruthlessly to the
cruelty of life.

The day began auspiciously enough. It was August now, a hot, languorous
August, when the river lay veiled in a mist of heat, and the air, even
in the early morning, was a sea of liquid gold. There were wonderful,
magical nights, too, nights of mellow moonlight and sweet, mysterious
perfumes, nights when a breath of clean, fragrance from distant
bean-fields mingled with the richer, heavier scent of roses and Madonna
lilies.

To Toni the summer had been one long time of enchantment. From the
moment when she opened her eyes in the dawn, and ran to the window to
see the hills shimmering in the heat, and the river sparkling with the
peculiar silvery sheen of early morning, to the moment when she took her
last stroll in the garden at night, and saw the stars come out in the
darkening sky, while the white owls hooted mournfully in the tall trees,
all, to Toni, was happiness and joy.

There is no doubt that people who are not introspec