It was the sort of weather Piers revelled in.  It suited his tropical nature.  But it affected Avery very differently.  All her customary energy wilted before it, and yet she was strangely restless also.  A great reluctance to attend the wedding possessed her, wherefore she could not have said.  But for some reason Piers was determined that she should go.  He was even somewhat tyrannical on the subject, and rather than have a discussion Avery had yielded the point.  For Piers was oddly difficult in those days.  Crowther’s visit, which had barely run into forty-eight hours, seemed to have had a disquieting effect upon him.  There had developed a curious, new-born mastery in his attitude towards her, which she sometimes found it hard to endure.  She missed the chivalry of the early days.  She missed the sweetness of his boyish adoration.

She did not understand him, but she knew that he was not happy.  He never took her into his confidence, never alluded by word or sign to the change which he must have realized that she could not fail to notice.  And Avery on her part made no further effort to open the door that was so strenuously locked against her.  With an aching heart she gave herself to the weary task of waiting, convinced that sooner or later the nature of the barrier which he so stubbornly ignored would be revealed to her.  But it was impossible to extend her full confidence to him.  Moreover, he seemed to shrink from all intimate subjects.  Instinctively and wholly involuntarily she withdrew into herself, meeting reserve with reserve.  Since he had become master rather than lover, she yielded him obedience, and she hid away her love, not deliberately or intentionally, but rather with the impulse to protect from outrage that which was holy.  He was not asking love of her just then.

She saw but little of him during the day.  He was busy on the estate, busy with the coming election, busy with a hundred and one matters that evidently occupied his thoughts very fully.  The heat seemed to imbue him with inexhaustible energy.  He never seemed tired after the most strenuous exertion.  He never slacked for a moment or seemed to have a moment to spare till the day was done.  He was generally late for meals, and always raced through them at a speed that Avery was powerless to emulate.

He was late on the day of Ina Rose’s wedding, so late that Avery, who had dressed in good time and was lying on the sofa in her room, began to wonder if he had after all abandoned the idea of going.  But she presently heard him race into his own room, and immediately there came the active patter of Victor’s feet as he waited upon him.

She lay still, listening, wishing that the wedding were over, morbidly dreading the heat and crush and excitement which she knew awaited her and to which she felt utterly unequal.

A quarter of an hour passed, then impetuously, without preliminary, her door opened and Piers stood on the threshold.  He had the light behind him, for Avery had lowered the blinds, and so seeing him she was conscious of a sudden thrill of admiration.  For he stood before her like a prince.  She had never seen him look more handsome, more patrician, more tragically like that woman in the picture-frame downstairs who smiled so perpetually upon them both.