the very first, he had realized that the acquaintance between this
socially ruined, no longer young, yet still fascinating woman, and this
young, enthusiastic man would be no slight, ephemeral thing. The woman
had willed it otherwise. And perhaps the almost ungovernable
root-qualities of Nigel had willed it otherwise, too, although he did
not know that. Enthusiasm plies a whip that starts steeds in a mad
gallop it is not easy to arrest. Even the vigorous force that started
them may be unable to pull them up.

Where exactly was Nigel going?

Smiling and sneering men in the clubs said, to a crude liaison. They
said more. They said the liaison was a fact, and marvelled that a fellow
like Armine should be willing to be "a bad last." Isaacson knew the
untruth of this gossip. There was no liaison. But would there ever be
one? Did Mrs. Chepstow intend that there should be one? Or had her
intention from the beginning been quite otherwise?

Isaacson did not know in detail what Nigel's past had been. He imagined
it, from the man's point of view, to have been unusually pure. But he
did not suppose it stainless. His keen eyes of a physician read the
ardour of Nigel's temperament. He made no mistake about his man. Nigel
ought to have married. That he had never done so was due to a sorrow in
early life, the death of a girl whom he had loved. Isaacson knew nothing
of this, and sometimes he had wondered why no woman captured this nature
so full of impulse and of sympathy, so full of just those qualities
which make good women happy. If Mrs. Chepstow should capture it, the
irony of life would be in flood.

Would she win the love as well as the pity and the chivalry of Nigel,
which she already had? Would she awaken the flesh of this man as well
as the spirit, and through spirit and flesh would she attain his soul?

And then?

Isaacson's sincerity was sorely tested by his friendship at this period.
Original though he was, and full of the sensitive nature's distaste for
marching with the mob, he was ranged with the mob against Nigel in this
affair of Mrs. Chepstow. Yet Nigel claimed him as an ally, a kindred
spirit. He was not explicit, but in their fugitive intercourse he was
perpetually implying. It was "You and I," and the rest of the world shut
out. Pity was working within him, chivalry was working, the generosity
of his soul, but also its fighting obstinacy. There was something in
Nigel which loved to have its back against the w