ce. 'And the wedding is to
be soon. Her long solitude and sufferings justify haste. What you said
was true. Sheer weariness and distraction have driven her to me. She
was quite passive at last, and agreed to anything I proposed--such is the
persuasive force of trained logical reasoning! A good and wise woman,
she perceived what a true shelter from sadness was offered in me, and was
not the one to despise Heaven's gift.'

XL

The silence of Swithin was to be accounted for by the circumstance that
neither to the Mediterranean nor to America had he in the first place
directed his steps. Feeling himself absolutely free he had, on arriving
at Southampton, decided to make straight for the Cape, and hence had not
gone aboard the Occidental at all. His object was to leave his heavier
luggage there, examine the capabilities of the spot for his purpose, find
out the necessity or otherwise of shipping over his own equatorial, and
then cross to America as soon as there was a good opportunity. Here he
might inquire the movements of the Transit expedition to the South
Pacific, and join it at such a point as might be convenient.

Thus, though wrong in her premisses, Viviette had intuitively decided
with sad precision. There was, as a matter of fact, a great possibility
of her not being able to communicate with him for several months,
notwithstanding that he might possibly communicate with her.

This excursive time was an awakening for Swithin. To altered
circumstances inevitably followed altered views. That such changes
should have a marked effect upon a young man who had made neither grand
tour nor petty one--who had, in short, scarcely been away from home in
his life--was nothing more than natural. New ideas struggled to disclose
themselves and with the addition of strange twinklers to his southern
horizon came an absorbed attention that way, and a corresponding
forgetfulness of what lay to the north behind his back, whether human or
celestial. Whoever may deplore it few will wonder that Viviette, who
till then had stood high in his heaven, if she had not dominated it,
sank, like the North Star, lower and lower with his retreat southward.
Master of a large advance of his first year's income in circular notes,
he perhaps too readily forgot that the mere act of honour, but for her
self-suppression, would have rendered him penniless.

Meanwhile, to come back and claim her at the specified time, four years
thenc