“Only that, Irene?” he asked, with his hand on her shoulder.
“I shall always give you all that is in me to give,” she replied. “You must try to be content.”
He turned away sorrowfully, and sat down to table. Presently he told her how he had entered her room last night, and found her sleeping. It had made him happier.
“I was with Hughie all day,” she explained, with feminine suppression of connective links.
“He is a comfort to you?”
“A new comfort,” she said.
The day passed tolerably enough, and the next and the next. Their outer life remained unchanged. Yet it was the simulacrum of the old. She met him with gentle kindness, uttering no word of reproach, and manifesting a tender interest in his concerns and comforts. But the unassayable essence of their union had gone. She had grown reserved, self-contained. Hugh bowed his head beneath his punishment. He recognised the futility of pleading. Once more she took her place among the cold stars, hopelessly remote. The stamp of finality seemed impressed upon their relations. And the hunger for that which could never be came into his eyes.
They rarely spoke of the disintegrating cause. Once she asked him whether he feared public exposure. He reassured her. The man would be a devil if he blabbed such a secret abroad, considering the awful peril in which he would place her. The other would keep silent for her own sake. Why she had confided in Gerard was a mystery.
“You must seek the motive in love or hate,” said Irene.
“Hate, then.”