Pauline tried to search in the past of their love for the occasion of the divergence. It must be her own fault. It was she who had often behaved foolishly and impetuously, who had always supposed that her mother and sisters knew nothing about love, who had been to Guy all through their engagement utterly useless. It was she who had stopped his becoming a schoolmaster to help his father, it was she who had discouraged him from accepting that post in Persia. As Pauline looked back upon these two years she saw herself at every cross-road in Guy's career standing to persuade him toward the wrong direction.
Then, too, recurred the dreadful problem of religion. It was she who had not resisted his inclination to laugh at what she knew was true. It was she who had most easily and most weakly surrendered, so that it was natural for him to treat her faith as something more conventional than real.
The worries surged round her like waves in the darkness, and the one anchor of hope she still possessed was dragging ominously. Oh, if she could but be sure that she was essential to his happiness, she would be able to conquer everything else. The loneliness of her father and mother, Guy's debts, the religious difficulties, the self-reproach for those moonlit nights upon the river, the jealousy of his friends, the fear of his poems' failure, his absence in London, all these could be overcome if only she were sure of being vital to Guy's felicity.
A dull summer wind sent a stir through the dry leaves of the creepers, but the night grew hotter notwithstanding and sleep utterly refused to approach her room.
Next day, when Guy came round to the Rectory, Pauline was so eager to hear the answer to her question that she would take no account of the jaded spirit of such a day as this after a wedding, and its natural influence on Guy's point of view.
All the afternoon, however, they helped the Rector with his bulbs, and no opportunity of intimate conversation occurred until after tea when they were sitting in the nursery. The wind that last night had run with slow tremors through the leaves was now blowing gustily, and banks of clouds were gathering, great clouds that made the vegetation seem all the more dry and stale, as they still deferred their drench of rain.
"Guy, I don't want to annoy you, but is it really necessary that your poems should appear without your name?"
"Absolutely," he said firmly.
"You don't think any of them are good?"
"Oh, some are all right, but I don't believe in them as I used to believe in them."