e weeks and weeks, he had thrown out his net, and had caught enough
facts, Lord knows. But had he any certainty that he had put them
together right? He had not yet caught in her any one tone or look or
phrase that would give him the unmistakable clue. He had set down words
and words and words that would tell him what her life really was, if he
only knew the alphabet of her language. He might be making a fool of
himself with his almost certainty that she was conscious of having
outgrown, like a splendid tropical tree, the wretched little
kitchen-garden where fate had transplanted her. When he could stamp down
his heat of feeling and let his intelligence have a moment's play, he
was perfectly capable of seeing that he might be misinterpreting
everything he had observed. For instance, that evening over the
photograph-album with her betrayal of some strong feeling of distaste
for the place near Rome. It was evident, from her tone, her look, her
gesture, that the name of it brought up some acutely distasteful memory
to her, but that could mean anything, or nothing. It might be merely
some sordid accident, as that a drunken workman had said something
brutal to her there. Women of her sort, he knew, never forgot those
things. Or any one of a thousand such incidents. He would never know the
significance of that gesture of shrinking of hers.

As he walked behind her, he looked hard at her back, with its
undulating, vase-like beauty, so close to him; and felt her immeasurably
distant. She opened the door now and went out into the sunlight,
stepping a little to one side as though to make room for him to come up
beside her. He found that he knew every turn of her head, every poise of
her shoulders and action of her hands, the whole rhythm of her body, as
though they were his own. And there she passed from him, far and remote.

A sudden certainty of fore-ordained defeat came over him, as he had
never known before. He was amazed at the violence of his pain,
intolerable, intolerable!

* * * * *

She turned her head quickly and caught his eyes in this instant of
inexplicable suffering.

* * * * *

What miraculous thing happened then? It seemed to him that her face
wavered in golden rays, from the radiance of her eyes. For she did not
withdraw her gaze. She looked at him with an instant, profound sympathy
and pity, no longer herself, transfigured, divine by the depth of