's knuckle on her bed-room door next morning, she was not more
reflectively conscious than a packet travelling to its destination by
pneumatic tube. Nor was she acutely impressionable to the features and
the voice she loved.

'You know of Skepsey?' she said.

'Ah, poor Skepsey!' Victor frowned and heaved.

'One of us ought to stand beside him at the funeral.'

'Colney or Fenellan?'

'I will ask Mr. Durance.'

'Do, my darling.'

'Victor, you did not tell me of Dartrey's wife.'

'There again! They all get released! Yes, Dartrey! Dartrey has his luck
too.'

She closed her eyes, with the desire to be asleep.

'You should have told me, dear.'

'Well, my love! Well--poor Dartrey! I fancy I hadn't a confirmation of
the news. I remember a horrible fit of envy on hearing the hint: not
much more than a hint: serious illness, was it?--or expected event.
Hardly worth while to trouble my dear soul, till certain. Anything about
wives, forces me to think of myself--my better self!'

'I had to hear of it first from Mrs. Blathenoy.'

'You've heard of duels in dark rooms:--that was the case between
Blathenoy and me last night for an hour.'

She feigned somnolent fatigue over her feverish weariness of heart. He
kissed her on the forehead.

Her spell-bound intention to speak of Dudley Sowerby to him, was broken
by the sounding of the hall-door, thirty minutes later. She had lain in
a trance.

Life surged to her with the thought, that she could decide and take
her step. Many were the years back since she had taken a step; less
independently then than now; unregretted, if fatal. Her brain was heated
for the larger view of things and the swifter summing of them. It could
put the man at a remove from her and say, that she had lived with him
and suffered intensely. It gathered him to her breast rejoicing in their
union: the sharper the scourge, the keener the exultation. But she had
one reproach to deafen and beat down. This did not come on her from the
world: she and the world were too much foot to foot on the antagonist's
line, for her to listen humbly. It came of her quick summary survey of
him, which was unnoticed by the woman's present fiery mind as being
new or strange in any way: simply it was a fact she now read; and
it directed her to reproach herself for an abasement beneath his
leadership, a blind subserviency and surrender of her faculties to his
greater powers, such as no soul of a breathing body should yield t