"Of course I understand. Friends we shall always be, and each welcome to the other when our devious ways may cross. Honor is not likely to be sentimental under such curious conditions. She will view this, your return, with the calm self-possession she displays in all affairs of life. It has done her good already, and lifted a cloud. I tell you so frankly. She was haunted. I hear you know all about that. There is no need for you to say what you feel about it. I will take your words as spoken. So here we stand—we three—and our lives must go forward and unfold to the ripening here on this hillside. What then? There is room enough?"
"Ample, I should imagine. That you should ask the question is a little astonishing. But I understand you better than you think. You can't help the defiance in your tone, Stapledon; you can't wholly hide the hardness in your voice. D'you think I don't know what's cutting you so deep when you look at me and remember that night? Forgive me. I have paid for it with grey hairs."
"You mistake. I should be a fool to blame you seriously for that. Merely evil fortune. Evil fortune was overdue in my life. I had been waiting long for reverses. You were the unconscious instrument."
"Your old, sombre creed, whose god is the law of chance. Anyhow, you and your wife shall find no truer friend than Christopher Yeoland in the years to come."
They shook hands and separated, the one perfectly happy and contented that this ordeal was over; the other already in a cloud of cares with his face lifted to meet troubles still invisible. The one saw a smooth and sunlit road ahead of him—a road of buds and flowers and singing birds; the other stood among pitfalls past numbering, and the way was dreary as well as dangerous.
As he returned home, Myles stopped and looked over a gate to set his thoughts in order. Whereupon he made discoveries little calculated to soothe or sustain him in this hour. First he found that lack of knowledge alone was responsible for his commotion—lack of knowledge of his wife; and secondly, reviewing his recent conversation with Christopher, he very readily observed a note in it unfamiliar to himself. This man's advent aroused an emotion that Myles had read of and heard about, but never felt. Upon the threshold of renewed intercourse, and despite so many friendly words, Stapledon recognised the thing in his heart and named it. He was jealous of Yeoland's return, and his discovery staggered him. The fact felt bad enough; the position it indicated overwhelmed him, for it shone like an evil light on the old fear; it showed that the understanding he boasted between himself and Honor by no means obtained. Herein lay his trial and his terror. No cloudless marital life could receive this miasma into its atmosphere for an instant, for jealousy's germ has no power to exist where a man and a woman dwell heart to heart.
Great forces shook Stapledon; then he roused himself, fell back upon years of self-discipline, shut the floodgates of his mind, and told his heart that he was a fool.
"The man shall be my friend—such a friend as I have never had yet," he said aloud to the night. "I will weary him with my friendship. He is honest, and has sacrificed his life for me. It is the vileness of human nature, that hates benefits received, which works in me against him. And if it pleases Fate to send me another child, this man, who believes in God, shall be its godfather."
His determination comforted Stapledon, and he passed slowly homeward conscious of a battle won, strong in the belief that he had slain a peril at its birth. He told himself that the word "jealousy" rang unreal and theatrical, in presence of his wife's slumber.
CHAPTER III.