"Love's strength standeth in Love's sacrifice,
And he who suffers most has most to give."
—Hamilton King.
Dinner that evening was an oppressively silent affair. The man's white Northern anger still smouldered beneath his surface immobility; while Quita, who could not bring herself to believe in the spontaneity of Richardson's engagement at mess, was instinctively measuring and crossing swords with the husband, whose personality held her captive even while it forced her every moment nearer to the danger-point of open defiance.
Both were thankful when the solemn farce of eating and drinking came to an end; and Quita rose with an audible sigh of relief.
"Are you coming into the drawing-room at all?" she asked, addressing the question to his centre shirt-stud.
"Yes—at once. I have a good deal to say to you."
She raised her eyebrows with a small polite smile, and swept on before him, her step quickened by the fact that his words had set the blood rushing through her veins. The dead weight of his silence pulverised her. Speech, however dangerous, would be pure relief.
Before following, he locked up spirit tantalus and cigar-box with his wonted deliberation; and on reaching the drawing-room found her absorbed in contemplation of Dick's portrait, hands clasped behind her, the unbroken lines of her grey-green dress lending height and dignity to her natural grace; the glitter of defiance gone out of her eyes.
Lenox set his lips, and confounded the advantages nature and art conspire to bestow upon some women, more especially when they know themselves beloved. The mere man in him had one impulse only,—to take instant possession of her; to conquer her lurking antagonism by sheer force of passion and of will. But he had sense enough to know that such primitive methods would not shift, by one hair's-breadth, their real point of division; would, in fact, be no less than inverted defeat. The heart of her was secure:—that he knew. It was her detached, elusive mind and spirit that were still to win; and a man's arms had small concern with that form of capture.
Quita vouchsafed him a glance as he entered. Then her gaze returned to the picture.
"One misses him," she said, presumably to the tall figure on the hearth-rug. "I think I have never known a man so uniformly cheerful and sweet-tempered. But it is selfish to grudge him a little change of atmosphere. And no doubt he is having a livelier evening than we are."