After that he turned the pages assiduously, it wouldn’t do to be caught dreaming. Then came the relapse....
She had flitted away from him; yes, the day had come when she had flitted. He had known, always, somewhere within himself, that it would come. To whom had she gone?—he didn’t know; he hadn’t tried to find out, perhaps to no one; and, anyway, the fate of her body, passionately as he had loved it, didn’t seem so vital a matter; what mattered was the flame within her; he couldn’t bear to think that she should have given anyone that. Not that he was fatuous enough to suppose that he had ever had it. Oh, no!—he was far too humble, too diffident in his mind. He had worshipped her all the more because he knew there was something in her withdrawn, the eternal pilgrim, the incorrigible truant. He knew that he could never have loved any woman who hadn’t that element in her, and since he had only found it once, quite logically he had never loved but once. (He had been young then. It had been easy enough for his relations to pick holes in her: “Flighty,” they had said, and, snorting, “She takes the best years of his life and then throws him aside,” and to all their comments he had never answered once, but had looked at them with deeply wounded eyes, so that they wondered uneasily what thoughts were locked in his heart. Nor had they ever got any information out of him; all their version of the story had been pieced together from bits of gossip and rumour; correct in the main as to facts, but utterly at sea as to essentials. But as he disdained to set them right, they were never any the wiser.) Never loved but once; and here he was, fifty, prosperous, even envied by other men, going daily about his affairs, dining well, talking rationally, a certain portliness in his manner which his figure had escaped.... He and his wife, a commendable couple; a couple that made one disbelieve in anarchy, wild oats, or wild animals. People smiled with the satisfaction of approval when they came into a room; here were security, decorum; here were civilization and politeness; here was a member of the civic corporation, a burgher to admire and to respect. He had a grave, courtly manner, slightly indulgent towards women, which they found not unattractive, although they knew that he varied it towards none of them, whether plain or pretty, staid or skittish. There was always the same grave smile on his lips, always the same sustained, controlled interest in his eyes; attention, perhaps, rather than interest; the line was a difficult one to draw. The type of man who made other men say, “Wish we had more fellows like him,” and of whom the women said amongst themselves, “A puzzling man, somehow, isn’t he? So quiet. One never knows what he is really thinking, or whether he isn’t laughing at us all. Do you suppose, though, that he has ever really felt?”
The madcap things she did! He recalled that evening at the railway station, when under the glare of the arc-lights she had danced up to a ticket-collector—she in her little travelling hat and her furs and the soft luxury that always seemed to surround her: “When does the next train start?” “Where for, miss?” “Oh, it doesn’t matter where for—just the next train?” And they had gone to Stroud.
“This Patience never seems to come out,” said the voice proceeding from under the lamp.
“No, dear?”
“No. I think I shall have to give it up for an easier one. It’s so irritating when things won’t go right.”
“I should try an easier one to-morrow.”
“To-morrow? Oh, I see, you want to go to bed. I must say, I should rather have liked to try it this evening, but if you want to go to bed....”
“No, dear, of course not; try your Patience by all means.”
“No, dear; I wouldn’t dream of it, as you want to go to bed. Besides, to-morrow will do just as well. You will go round, won’t you, and see that everything is properly locked up?”