ss touched him, while, at the same
time, they seemed to quench the last spark of hope in him. Had he counted
upon hearing something from her whenever he should break silence which
would lighten the veil over the future? It must have been so, otherwise
why this sense of fresh disaster?

'Dear Marie,' he said to her, kissing her brow as she stood beside him,
'you must be as good to me as you can. I shall probably be a good deal
out of London for the present, and my books are a wonderful help. After
all, life is not all summed up in one desire, however strong. Other
things are real to me--I am thankful to say. I shall live it down.'

'But why despair so soon?' she cried, rebelling against this heavy
acquiescence of his and her own sense of hopelessness. 'You are a man any
woman might love. Why should she not pass from the mere friendly
intellectual relation to another? Don't go away from London. Stay and see
as much of her as you can.'

Kendal shook his head. 'I used to dream,' he said huskily, 'of a time
when failure should have come, when she would want some one to step in
and shield her. Sometimes I thought of her protected in my arms against
the world. But now!'

She felt the truth of his unspoken argument--of all that his tone
implied. In the minds of both the same image gathered shape and
distinctness. Isabel Bretherton in the halo of her great success, in all
the intensity of her new life, seemed to her and to him to stand afar
off, divided by an impassable gulf from this simple, human craving, which
was crying to her, unheard and hopeless, across the darkness.

CHAPTER VIII

A month after the first performance of _Elvira_ Kendal returned to town
on a frosty December afternoon from the Surrey lodgings on which he had
now established a permanent hold. He mounted to his room, found his
letters lying ready for him, and on the top of them a telegram, which, as
his man-servant informed him, had arrived about an hour before. He took
it up carelessly, opened it, and bent over it with a start of anxiety.
It was from his brother-in-law. '_Marie is very ill. Doctors much
alarmed. Can you come to-night_?' He put it down in stupefaction. Marie
ill! the doctors alarmed! Good heavens! could he catch that evening
train? He looked at his watch, decided that there was time, and plunged,
with his servant's help, into all the necessary preparations. An hour and
a half later he was speeding along through the clear cold mo