"I think I shouldn't make too many inquiries into the question if I were you," he said deliberately. "Your way of life and mine are not quite the same. I am a plain man, and I go a man's way to work. I don't pose or talk cant. Luck comes my way now and again, although it's more often dead against me. It's with me now, and I mean to make the most of it. I owe part of it to you, you know, and that's why I've been generous."
"You owe it to me—to me?" said Evelyn blankly.
He pulled the door-chain, laughing, and she heard him laughing again as he went up-stairs. The night was warm, but she stood shivering like a frightened child in the empty hall at the thought which struck her.
CHAPTER IV
"If we could see ourselves as others see us, many of us would wear a mask"—ANON.
"It destroys one's nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being."—LORD BEACONSFIELD.
In work, says an old philosopher, a man may find his refuge for all ills of the mind; to drink deep of the fount of knowledge is to bring peace to the troubled soul. But work had been too long the mainspring of Farquharson's life for him to find in it now the comfort which might have lulled another man's anxiety. His life had been one of toil throughout. At Glune he had wrestled and fought for freedom; in the succeeding years, after his escape, he had struggled for knowledge and mere daily bread; in Taorna, fortune and fame had been his two objectives; in England he sought power. And after a time strain tells even upon the strong. It is often the most brilliant brain that snaps.
A normal man must have an outlet for his feelings and emotions. Farquharson's long self-repression in the past had made him the readier to be swayed by the right woman's influence when it came. He had never fully realized all that his daily communion with Evelyn had meant until after the wrench of their parting at Bramley.
The pain that can be sympathized with openly is endurable, but hidden pain is crushing. There is conceivable relief for a surcharged brain which can explain the why and wherefore of its sorrow; but in the world daily we meet widows who were never wives, and whose despair is the more hopeless because they have no lawful claim upon our sympathy.
In his separation from Evelyn, Farquharson had lost the friend, companion, helpmate, and bride of his dreams. Work—to a habitual worker—cannot heal so deep a wound as this; only complete change of circumstance and scene might possibly change a man's thoughts after such a blow. And for him there was no change. Shorn of all joy and pride in his work, he yet toiled ceaselessly at it; returning daily to a home which, worse than being bare and desolate, contained the wrong woman.