Obedient to his behests—­hurriedly spoken as she stepped into the chaise at Dover after the marriage ceremony—­she had wandered out every evening beyond the ha-ha into the park, on the chance of meeting him.

The evenings now were soft and balmy after the rain:  the air carried a pungent smell of dahlias and of oak-leaved geraniums to her nostrils, which helped her to throw off that miserable feeling of mental lassitude which had weighed her down ever since that fateful day at Dover.  She walked slowly along, treading the young tendrils of the moss, watching with wistful eyes the fleecy clouds, as they appeared through the branches of the elms, scurrying swiftly out towards the sea ... out towards freedom.

But evening after evening passed away, and she saw no sign of him.  She felt the futility, the humiliating uselessness of these nightly peregrinations in search of a man who seemed to have a hundred more desirable occupations than that of meeting his wife.  But she had not the power to drift out towards freedom now.  She obeyed mechanically because she must.  She had sworn to obey and he had bidden her come and wait for him.

August yielded to September, the oak-leaved geraniums withered whilst from tangled bosquets the melancholy eyes of the Michaelmas daisies peeped out questioningly upon the coming autumn.

Then one evening his voice suddenly sounded close to her ear, causing her to utter a quickly-smothered cry.  It had been the one dull day throughout this past glorious month, the night was dark and a warm drizzle had soaked through to her shoulders and wetted the bottom of her kirtle so that it hung heavy and dank round her ankles.  He had come to her as usual from out the gloom, just as she was about to cross the little bridge which spanned the sunk fence.

She realized then, with one of those sudden quivers of her sensibilities, to which, alas! she had become so accustomed of late, that he had always met her thus in the gloom—­always chosen nights when she could scarce see him distinctly, and this recollection still further enhanced that eerie feeling of terror which had assailed her since that fateful moment in the vestry.

But she tried to be natural and even gay with him, though at the first words of tender reproach with which she gently chided him for his prolonged absence, he broke into one of those passionate accesses of fury which had always frightened her, but now left her strangely cold and unresponsive.

Was the subtle change in him as well as in her?  She could not say.  Certain it is that, though his hands had sought hers in the darkness, and pressed them vehemently, when first they met he had not attempted to kiss her.

For this she was immeasurably grateful.

He was obviously constrained, and so was she, and when she opposed a cold silence to his outburst of passion, he immediately, and seemingly without any effort, changed his tone and talked more reasonably, even glibly of his work, which he said was awaiting him now in France.