“But you must remember it is rather hard on me—all this. I cannot just yet get accustomed to it. So if in any way I Fain you, you must forgive me.”
Then he got up and strolled to the window. It was a beautiful summer evening—a picture of peace and calm loveliness.
“It is hard upon me,” he murmured to him-self, “very hard upon me. But, good God, how she must have suffered! How she must suffer still, tied to a rough boor like me! That other, I don’t want to know who he is, I should pity him too, I suppose, but I’m not quite good enough for that; for I can’t see that his case is as bad as mine. Heaven knows, though he may be a hundred times my superior in every-thing else he can’t love her better. And to think —! My darling, how you must have suffered!”
If only Geoffrey could have uttered his thoughts, his generous, unselfish thoughts aloud, who knows what even then might have been the result?
But he could not. A strange reserve had fallen upon this naturally open and outspoken being. Gentle and attentive as ever to Marion, she was yet utterly changed. He avoided most pointedly the slightest demonstration of the affection with which his very heart was bursting; not a word of endearment, not a gesture of fondness did he allow himself. It was what Marion had been wishing for, and yet it pained her. But gradually she grew accustomed to it; and slowly but surely began that lamentable drifting apart so sad to see in two lives which should be as one. Henceforth she felt free to live yet more entirely in the past and in herself; for she was no longer fettered by the necessity of maintaining a semblance of affection. Geoffrey, she fancied, had felt it much less than she had feared. He would soon be absorbed and happy in his home-life and country pursuits.
So she did not trouble herself very much about him. “He was not after all,” she decided, “a man of very deep feeling. His dogs and horses would soon make up to him for any disappointment he might have experienced in a wife.”
Yet being a woman, with all a woman’s illogical “contrariness,” the reflection was not without a certain amount of bitterness.
[CHAPTER] IV.
“AT HOME.”
“The little bird now to salute the morn
Upon the naked branches sets her foot,
The leaves still lying at the mossy root;
And there a silly chirruping cloth keep
As if she fain would sing, yet fain would weep.
Praising fair summer that too soon is gone,
And sad for winter too soon coming on.”