the shadow,
eager for rest. The sun has been too ardent a lover. But the gaze of the
sun upon the receding earth is fonder than his look when she raised
herself to his bright face. So in Owen's autumn-haunted eyes there was
dread of the chances which he knew were accumulating against
him--enemies, he divined, were gathering in the background; and how he
might guard her, keep her for himself, became a daily inquisition.
Nothing had happened to lead him to think that his possession was
endangered, his fear proceeded from an instinct, which he could not
subdue, that she was gliding from him; he wrestled with the intangible,
and, striving to subordinate instinct to reason, he often refrained from
kissing her; he imitated the indifference which in other times he could
not dissimulate when the women who had really loved him besought him
with tears. But there was no long gain-saying of the delight of telling
her that he loved her, and when his aching heart forced him to question
her regarding the truth of her feelings towards him, she merely told him
that she loved him as much as ever, and the answer, instead of being a
relief, was additional fuel upon the torturing flame of his uncertainty.

Ever since their rupture and reconciliation in Florence, their relations
had been so uncertain that Owen often wondered if he were her lover.
Whether the reason for these periods of restraint was virtue or
indifference he could never be quite sure. He believed that she always
retained her conscience, but he could not forget that her love had once
been sufficient compensation for what she suffered from it. "The stage
has not altered her," he thought, "time has but nourished her
idiosyncrasies." He had been hoping for one of her sudden and violent
returnings to her former self, but such thing would not happen to-day,
and hardly knowing what reply to make, he asked if she were free to come
to look at some furniture. She mentioned several engagements, adding
that he had made her too many presents already.

She spoke of the rehearsal at considerable length, omitting, somehow, to
speak of Ulick, and after lunch she seemed restless and proposed to go
out at once.

As they drove off to see the Sheraton sideboard, he asked her if she had
seen Ulick Dean. To her great annoyance she said she had not, and this
falsehood spoilt her afternoon for her. She could not discover why she
had told this lie. The memory rankled in her and continued to take he