That was the secret of his strength.  That was the weapon by which he conquered.  She wondered if it had always been so, or if his physical weakness had tended to develop in him a greatness of heart of which more active men were quite incapable.  It might be true, as Mrs. Errol had contended, that all men had their possibilities, but, this was the only man she had ever met who had turned them to account.  All unconsciously, perhaps in response to a reaction which had been necessarily violent, Anne yielded herself that day for the first time in her life to a species of hero-worship that could not but beautify her own sad life.

When later she found herself alone with him, they talked for a space upon indifferent things, and then they did not talk at all.  The intimacy between them made conversation unnecessary, and Lucas Errol’s silence was as easy as his speech.

“You’ll take care of yourself,” he said once, “or I shan’t be easy about you.”

And, when she had promised that:  “And you’ll look us up as often as you find you can.  P’r’aps if you can’t come very often you’ll manage to write.”

But he made no direct reference to her husband’s return.  His sympathy neither sought nor needed expression in words.

Neither did he speak of himself.  He only at parting held her hand very closely for several silent seconds.  And Anne went away with a hushed feeling at her heart as if he had invoked a benediction.

Back to her home she went, strangely quiet and at peace.  She had thought that visit to Baronmead would have been painful to her.  She had expected to suffer afresh.  But it was instead as if a healing hand had been laid upon her, and as she went she thought no more of Nap, the savage, the sudden, the terrible; but of Lucas, the gentle, the patient, the chivalrous, who had won and would for ever keep her perfect trust.

The light of a golden evening lay upon the Manor as she entered.  It was wonderfully quiet.  She went in by the French windows that led into the drawing-room, and here, tempted by an impulse that had not moved her for long, she sat down at the piano and began very softly to play.

She had not touched the keys since her last visit to Baronmead.  She wondered, as idly she suffered her fingers to wander, how long it would be before she played again.

Yet it was hard to believe, sitting there in the quiet evening light, that the next day would witness her return to bondage, that bondage that had so cruelly galled her, the very thought of which had at one time filled her with repulsion.  But her feelings had undergone a change of late.  She could not feel that the old burden would ever return upon her.  She had been emancipated too long.  Her womanhood had developed too much during those months of liberty.  No, it could never be the same.  Patient and faithful wife she would still be.  She was ready to devote herself ungrudgingly, without reservation, to her invalid husband.  But his slave she would never be again.  She had overcome her repugnance; she was willing to serve.  But never again would he compel.  The days of his tyranny were for ever gone.