s wife. Was it that his
marriage, with all its repulsive episodes, had disgusted a fastidious
nature with the coarser aspects of the sex relation? The best was denied
him, and from the worse he himself turned away; though haunted all the
time by the natural hunger of the normal man.

As they walked on, Alcott gradually shaped some image for himself of
what had happened during the years of the marriage, piecing it
together from Buntingford's agitated talk. But he was not prepared for
a sudden statement made just as they were reaching the spot where
Alcott would naturally turn back towards the Rectory. It came with a
burst, after a silence.

"For God's sake, Alcott, don't suppose from what I have been telling you
that all the fault was on my wife's side, that I was a mere injured
innocent. Very soon after we married, I discovered that I had ceased to
love her, that there was hardly anything in common between us. And there
was a woman in Paris--a married woman, of my own world--cultivated, and
good, and refined--who was sorry for me, who made a kind of spiritual
home for me. We very nearly stepped over the edge--we should have
done--but for her religion. She was an ardent Catholic and her religion
saved her. She left Paris suddenly, begging me as the last thing she
would ever ask me, to be reconciled to Anna, and to forget her. For some
days I intended to shoot myself. But, at last, as the only thing I could
do for her, I did as she bade me. Anna and I, after a while, came
together again, and I hoped for a child. Then, by hideous ill luck, Anna,
about three months after our reconciliation, discovered a fragment of a
letter--believed the very worst--made a horrible scene with me, and went
off, as she has just told me,--not actually with Rocca as I believed, but
to join him in Italy. From that day I lost all trace of her. Her
concealment of the boy's birth was her vengeance upon me. She knew how
passionately I had always wanted a son. But instead she punished him--the
poor, poor babe!"

There was an anguish in the stifled voice which made sympathy
impertinent. Alcott asked some practical questions, and Buntingford
repeated his wife's report of the boy's condition, and her account of an
injury at birth, caused by the unskilful hands of an ignorant doctor.

"But I shall see him to-morrow. Ramsay and I go together. Perhaps, after
all, something can be done. I shall also make the first arrangements for
the divorce."

Alcot