there was, just for a
moment, the sound that sometimes comes into a mother's voice when she
speaks to her little child in the dark.

At the moment when he knew he did not love the white angel she stood
beside him.

And she thought that she was only a wretched woman.

CHAPTER XX

ROBIN had gone. He had gone, still protesting that Lady Holme was
deceiving herself, protesting desperately, with the mistaken chivalry of
one who was not only a gentleman to his finger-tips but who was also
an almost fanatical lover of his own romance. After recovering from
the first shock of his disillusion, and her strange reception of it,
so different from anything he could have imagined possible in her, or
indeed in any woman who had lived as she had, he had said everything
that was passionate, everything that fitted in with his old
protestations when she was beautiful. He had spoken, perhaps, even more
to recall himself than to convince her, but he had not succeeded in
either effort, and a strange, mingled sense of tragic sadness and
immense relief invaded him as the width of waterway grew steadily larger
between his boat and Casa Felice. He could have wept for her and for
himself. He could even have wept for humanity. Yet he felt the comfort
of one from whom an almost intolerable strain has just been removed. To
a man of his calibre, sensitive, almost feminine in his subtlety, the
situation had been exquisitely painful. He had felt what Viola was
feeling as well as what he was feeling. He had struggled like a creature
taken in a net. And how useless it had all been! He found himself
horribly inferior to her. Her behaviour at this critical moment had
proved to him that in his almost fantastic conception of her he had
shown real insight. Then why had his heart betrayed his intellect? Why
had his imagination proved true metal, his affection false? He asked
himself these questions. He searched his own nature, as many a man has
done in moments when he has found himself unworthy. And he was met by
mystery, by the "It was impossible for me!" which stings the soul that
would be strong. He remembered Carey's words that night in Half Moon
Street when Sir Donald had accompanied him home after the dinner in
Cadogan Square. Sir Donald had gone. He and Carey were alone, and he had
said that if one loves, one loves the kernel not the shell. And Carey
had said, "I think if the shell is a beautiful shell, and becomes
suddenly broken, it makes a