e bodies, but their souls
possessed her; she became the soul of each one of them in turn. It was
the intimacy, the spiritual warmth of the possession that gave her her
first sense of separation, of infidelity to Brodrick. The immaterial,
consecrated places were invaded. It was as if she closed her heart to
her husband and her child.

The mood continued as long as the vision kept its grip. She came out of
it unnerved and exhausted, and terrified at herself. Bodily
unfaithfulness seemed to her a lesser sin.

Brodrick was aware that she wandered. That was how he had always put it.
He had reckoned long ago with her propensity to wander. It was the way
of her genius; it was part of her queerness, of the dangerous charm that
had attracted him. He understood that sort of thing. It was his own
comparative queerness, his perversity, that had made him fly in the face
of his family's tradition. No Brodrick had ever married a woman who
wandered, who conceivably would want to wander.

And Jinny wandered more than ever; more than he had ever made allowances
for. And with each wandering she became increasingly difficult to find.

Still, hitherto he had had his certainty. Her spirit might torment him
with its disappearances; through her body, surrendered to his arms, he
had had the assurance of ultimate possession. At night her genius had no
power over her. Sleeping, she had deliverance in dreams. His passion
moved in her darkness, sounded her depths; through all their veils of
sleep she was aware of him, and at a touch she turned to him.

Now it was he who had no power over her.

One night, when he came to her, he found a creature that quivered at his
touch and shrank from it, fatigued, averted; a creature pitifully
supine, with arms too weary to enforce their own repulse. He took her in
his arms and she gave a cry, little and low, like a child's whimper. It
went to his heart and struck cold there. It was incredible that Jinny
should have given such a cry.

He lay awake a long time. He wondered if she had ceased to care for him.
He hardly dared own how it terrified him, this slackening of the
physical tie.

He got up early and dressed and went out into the garden. At six o'clock
he came back into her room. She was asleep, and he sat and watched her.
She lay with one arm thrown up above her pillow, as the trouble of her
sleep had tossed her. Her head was bowed upon her breast.

[Illustration: It was Jinny who lay there, Jinny