"If such a suspicion crossed his mind, he would depart from Godleigh. That I do steadfastly believe. Understand, your welfare would not weigh with him; but Honor's happiness—I feel more assured of it—is still more to him than his own."
"I know—I know; yet how easily a man in love persuades himself that a woman's vital welfare and real happiness depends upon him."
"Now we argue in a circle, and are at the starting-point again. Yeoland believed so thoroughly that she would be happier with you than with him that he actually blotted himself out of her life, and, when he heard she would not marry you while he lived, let it be known that he was dead. Solely for her sake he played that cumbrous prank."
"That is so; yet remember what you told me years ago. Then you honestly believed that this man, from the depths of his own peculiar nature, understood Honor better than anybody else in the world did. You thought that, and you are seldom wrong about people. So perhaps he has come to that conclusion too. If I was the wrong husband for her——"
"I never said such a thing."
"No, because I never asked you; but if it was so, what more likely than that he has discovered it since his return? At any rate he may think that this is the case—though I dispute it with all my heart—and he may feel his sacrifice was vain. Then, what more likely than that he should ask himself if it is too late to amend the position?"
Mr. Endicott's face expressed absolute surprise and some scorn for the speaker.
"Do I hear Myles Stapledon? Where have you sucked poison since last we spoke together? You, who live in the fresh air and enjoy the companionship of natural beasts and wholesome lives, to spin this trash! And wicked trash, too, for what right have you to map out evil roads for other people to follow? What right have you to foretell a man's plan and prophesy ill? Have done with this dance of Jack-o'-lanterns, and get upon the solid road again. Look in your wife's character. No need to go further than that for ointment to such a wound as you suffer from. You have let jealousy into the house, Myles, and the reek of it and the blight of it will make your life rotten to the marrow if you don't set to work and cleanse the chamber again. I know they are happy together; but you've got to face that. I know she's better for his coming, and you've got to face that too. These are subtle things, and if you can't understand them, put them behind you. All this is false fire, and you're in a ferment of windy misery brewed inside you—just wind, because the home-coming of this native has upset your digestion. You ought to feel some shame to harbour such a pack of imps. Time was when a breath of air from Cosdon Beacon would have blown them back to their master. How they got in I can't say; for it's not part of your real character to make trouble. You're like the ploughboy who builds a ghostie with a sheet and turnip and only frightens himself. Get this weed out of your heart at any cost. Burn it out with the caustic of common sense; and trust me, blind as I am, to be quick enough to smell the smoke that tells of fire. I mean in this matter. Honor's only less to me than she is to you. And I know the truth about her as sure as I know the sound of her voice and the things it says, and the secrets it lets out, apart from the words her tongue speaks."
"She's said many a queer thing on the subject of a man and his wife and their relations each to the other. I cannot easily forget them."
"It's her wide, healthy frankness in every affair of life that might set you at rest, if you were not, as I hint to you, a fool."