Alack!—­Eugenie’s heart was wrung with pity for the young maimed creature; but the peevish image of the wife was swept away by the more truly tragic image of the husband.  Eugenie might try to persuade herself of the possibility of Elsie’s recovery; her real instinct denied it.  Yet life was not necessarily threatened, it seemed, though certain fatal accidents might end it in a week.  The omens pointed to a long and fluctuating case—­to years of hopeless nursing for Arthur, and complaining misery for his wife.

Years!  Eugenie sat down in a corner of the Orangerie garden, locking her hands together, in a miserable pity for Arthur.  She knew well what a shining pinnacle of success and fame Welby occupied in the eyes of the world; she knew how envious were the lesser men—­such a man as John Fenwick, for instance—­of a reputation and a success they thought overdone and undeserved.  But Arthur himself!  She seemed to be looking into his face, graven on the dusk, the face of a man tragically silent, patient, eternally disappointed; of an artist conscious of ideals and discontents, loftier, more poignant, far than his fellows will ever know—­of a poet, alone at heart, forbidden to ‘speak out,’ blighted, and in pain.

‘Arthur—­Arthur!’ She leaned her head against the pedestal of a marble vase—­wrestling with herself.

Then, quick as fire, there flew through her veins the alternate possibility—­Elsie’s death—­freedom for herself and Arthur—­the power to retrace her own quixotic, fatal step....

Madame de Pastourelles rose to her feet, rigid and straight in her black dress, wrestling as though with an attacking Apollyon.  She seemed to herself a murderess in thought—­the lowest and vilest of human beings.

In an anguish she looked through the darkness, in a wild appeal to Heaven to save her from herself—­this new self, unknown to her!—­to shut down and trample on this mutiny of a sinful and selfish heart—­to make it impossible—­impossible!—­that ever again, even without her will, against her will, a thought so hideous, so incredible, should enter and defile her mind.

She walked on blindly towards the water and the woods.  Her eyes were full of tears, which she could not stop.  Unconsciously, to hide them, she threw round her head a black lace scarf she had brought out with her against the evening chill, and drew it close round her face.

‘How late you are!’ said a joyous voice beside her.

She looked up.  Fenwick emerging from the wood, towards the shelter of which she was hurrying, stood before her, bareheaded, as he often walked, his eyes unable to hide the pleasure with which he beheld her.

She gave a little gasp.

‘You startled me!’

In the dim light he could only see her slight, fluttering smile; and it seemed to him that she was or had been in agitation.  But at least it was nothing hostile to himself; nay, it was borne in upon him as he turned his steps, and she walked beside him with a quick yet gradually subsiding breath, that his appearance had been a relief to her, that she was glad of his companionship.