"Gerald, don't. I won't have you talk like that. You have worked hard, and I am proud of you. Lots of men have done for less without half your weaknesses."
"Well, there's no denying it is jolly rough on any man to have to give up a life like mine, and go and grub in a beastly office."
"I say you have done more than well, dear. But don't call the office 'beastly,' Gerald. They have done everything to show their appreciation of you. Remember, you started with three pounds a week, and they are now giving you six. I often think it was very good of the Major to get you so good a start."
"I owe nothing to the Major," returned Gerald hotly. "What he did, he did as a salve to his own conscience, that was all. It's no use, Miriam, I can't forget that it was through him I lost everything—not that I regret the exchange so far as Hilda is concerned. You are worth a hundred of her any day. You know, dear, I don't regret that. Still, I can't help feeling sore when I think that Dundas got everything and I nothing. I can see now that Hilda was no loss. She showed her hand pretty plainly. I believe she'd have married Beelzebub himself for money. Anyhow, directly she knew I was out of it, she made very short work of me."
"But, dear, you told me yourself that her father made her give you up!"
"I don't fancy she required so much 'making.' But don't let's talk about her now. Do you know, Miriam, I used to think Dundas was rather sweet on you."
Miriam shook her head and laughed.
"Nonsense, dear. He liked to talk to me, nothing more. Besides, if he had been ever so in love with me, I wouldn't have married him. I'm afraid I had too soft a spot for someone else!"
The young man chuckled inwardly at this allusion to her preference for himself. He was as vain as ever. But to Miriam's mind there came back the recollection of a certain day at the Pitt Hotel—it was strange how indissolubly connected was that hotel with the greater issues of her life—when Major Dundas had come to her and asked her to be his wife, only to be told that she was already engaged to his cousin. She recalled, too, his great generosity—so ill-appreciated, she was forced to confess, by the recipient of it—in straightway using every endeavour to procure for his more successful rival a berth in a shipping-office where he had some influence. He had even gone so far as to offer her an income, which of course she had refused. And he had promised always to be her friend. After that she had seen him no more. He had drifted back to Lesser Thorpe, there to do his work as lord of the manor, and twelve months later had capitulated to Hilda. She could see it all in her mind's eye—the good-natured, simple, easy-going soldier, and the pretty, covetous, artful girl, backed by her poverty-stricken, designing parents, and, as a result, Miss Hilda Marsh the lady of the manor of Lesser Thorpe.
All this passed rapidly through her mind now as she sat gazing into the fire. Her two years of married life had not engendered in her any admiration for her husband's character. She was obliged to confess that it was not to be admired. By dint of much exertion of her superior moral force over him she had so far succeeded as to keep in check his innate tendencies to lapse. She had kept him to his work, and it was only fair to him to say he had worked. He had even proved to have more capacity than she had ever credited him with. Strong as her feeling was for him, there had been times when she had come very near being ashamed of it. She could not account for it. She only knew that it existed—had existed from the moment when they first had met. It was a thing almost apart from her life, and yet wholly of it. There were times when she tried to persuade herself that it was pity she had felt for him—that pity which is so akin to love. But in her heart of hearts she knew better—she knew that it was rather that fierce passion which no woman can control; which exists of itself and for itself, and is outside and utterly unaffected by any admiration or lack of it, and which comes but once in the lifetime of any man or woman. This was the feeling inspired in her by Gerald Arkel, and she had not been proof against it. It had whirled her off her feet, and she was now irrevocably committed to it. She had married a child—a weak, vain, selfish, pleasure-loving child, with instincts tending all towards destruction. The tinkle of a glass aroused her from her reverie. She looked up at him.