He had not stopped to consider what it all meant—why the dull, monotonous round of existence on the farm to which he had long grown accustomed should all at once have come alive—grown vibrant and quick with some new impulse.
But the happenings of to-day had suddenly shown him where he stood. That revealing moment by the river’s edge with Magda, the swift, unreasoning jealousy of Davilof which had run like fire through his veins—jealousy because the other man was so evidently an old acquaintance with prior rights in her which seemed to set him, Dan Storran, quite outside the circle of their intimacy—had startled him into recognition of how far he had drifted.
He loved her—craved for her with every fibre of his being. She was his woman, and beside the tumultuous demand for her of all his lusty manhood the quiet, unexacting affection which he bore his wife was as water is to wine.
And since in Dan’s simple code of ethics a man’s loyalty to his wife occupied a very definite and unassailable position, the realisation came to him fraught with the acme of bitterness and self-contempt. Nor did he propose to yield to the madness in his blood. Hour after hour, as he tramped blindly across country, he thrashed the matter out. This love which had come to him was a forbidden thing—a thing which must be fought and thrust outside his life. For the sake of June he must see no more of Magda. She must go—leave Stockleigh. Afterwards he would tear the very memory of her out of his heart.
Dan was a very direct person. Having taken his decision he did not stop to count the cost. That could come afterwards. Dimly he apprehended that it might be a very heavy one. But he was strong, now—strong to do the only possible thing. As he stood with his hand on the latch of the living-room door, he wondered whether what he had to say would mean to Magda all, or even a part, of what it meant to him—wondered with a sudden uncontrollable leaping of his pulses. . . . The latch grated raucously as he jerked it up and flung open the door. Magda was standing by the window, the soft glow of the westering sun falling about her. Dan’s eyes rested hungrily on the small dark head outlined against the tender light.
“Why—Dan——” She faltered into tremulous silence before the look on his face—the aching demand of it.
The huskily sweet voice robbed him of his strength. He strode forward and caught her in his arms, staring down at her with burning eyes. Then, almost violently, he thrust her away from him, unkissed, although the soft curved lips had for a moment lain so maddeningly near his own.
“When can you and Mrs. Grey make it convenient to leave Stockleigh Farm?” he asked, his voice like iron.
The crudeness of it whipped her pride—that pride which Michael had torn down and trampled on—into fresh, indignant life.
“To leave? Why should we leave?”