"We make our lives," he said, enigmatically to Mary, that first day when they were playing golf. "Lord knows what powers direct us. I may make the most perfect approach on to this green, but nothing on earth can tell me exactly which way the ball is going to kick."
He had approached his life with all the precision of which he was capable, but the kick had come and it had come the wrong way. There was no accounting for its direction. It was obvious to him he could not see the world through his wife's eyes. After some years it had become no less obvious that she could not see it through his.
He wandered through the rooms of his own house, a stranger to the sounds of meaningless laughter that echoed there. He took his walking-stick, called a dog and strode out on to the downs, glad to be in fact alone.
Gradually such laughter as there was in him--he had his full share of it--died out of him. Much as he loved his wife, much as she loved him, he knew he was becoming more and more of a disappointment to her. In the keener moments of consciousness of his loneliness, she found him morose, until, unable to sing or laugh with the songs and laughter of that house, he came at times to believe he was morose himself.
"What's happening to me," he would say when he was alone; "what's happening to me is that I'm losing the joy of life."
Yet the sight of the countryside at Springtime seemed to himself to give him more sense of joy than all the revels in London that made his wife's eyes dance with youth.
He had laughed inordinately once; had won her heart by the compound of his spirits, grave and gay. It was quite true when she accused him of becoming too serious-minded. He heard the absence of his laughter and sometimes took himself away and alone that she might notice it the less.
There were times when it seemed she had lost all touch with his mind that once had interested her. He took his mind away and left his heart there at Wenlock Hall behind him.
What can happen with a man's mind when he holds it alone in his keeping is what happened to Julius Liddiard.
Jane was more accurate than she knew when she declared that he had come to Bridnorth to be alone.