she married him, he had
even had for her a certain physical attraction; but already that
physical attraction--really the passing fancy of a capricious and a
too-experienced woman--had lost its savour, and for a reason that, had
he known it, would have cut Nigel to the heart.

She could not bear his love of an ideal, his instinct to search for
hidden good in men and women, but especially in herself, his secret
desire for moral progress. She knew that these traits existed in him,
and therefore was able to hate them; but she was incapable of really
understanding them, clever woman though she was. Her cleverness was of
that type which comprehends vice more completely than virtue, and
although she could apprehend virtue, as she had proved by her conduct in
London which had led to her capture of Nigel, she could never learn
really to understand its loveliness, or to bask happily in its warmth
and light. Morally she seemed to be impotent. And the great gulf which
must for ever divide her husband from her was his absolute disbelief
that any human being can be morally impotent. He must for ever
misunderstand her, because his power to read character was less acute
than his power to love. And she, in her inmost chamber of the soul,
though she might play a part to deceive, though she might seldom be,
however often appearing to be, truly her natural self, had the desire,
active surely or latent in the souls of all human creatures, to be
understood, to be known as she actually was.

Nigel had been aware that Zoe Harwich was going to have a child, and he
had never let her know it.

She repeated that fact over and over in her mind as she sat and looked
at the sunset. Ever since the morning she had been repeating it over and
over. Even her violent outburst of temper had not stilled the insistent
voice which in reiteration never wearied. In the first moments of her
bitterness and anger, the voice had added, "Nigel shall pay me for
this." It did not add this now, perhaps because into her fierceness had
glided a weariness. She was paying for her passion. Perhaps Nigel would
have to pay for that payment too. He was going away to the Fayyum in two
or three days. How she wished he was going to-night, that she need not
be with him to-night, need not play the good woman, or the woman with
developing goodness in her, to-night, now that she was weary from having
been angry!

The tea had become almost black from standing. She poured out anothe