The wrenching stage of doubt had passed for Hamilton, but he thought on the future with profound disquiet.  He would have the woman wholly or not at all, after Mary Fawcett’s death; he knew from Dr. Hamilton that it would occur before the year was out.  He had no taste for intrigue.  He wanted a home, and the woman he would have rejoiced to marry was the woman he expected to love and live with for the rest of his life.  Once or twice the overwhelming sense of responsibility, the certainty of children, whom he could not legalize, the possible ruin of his worldly interests, as well as his deep and sincere love for the woman, drove him almost to the bows of a homeward-bound vessel.  But the sure knowledge that he should return kept him doggedly on St. Christopher.  He even had ceased to explain his infatuation to himself by such excuse as was given him by her beauty, her grace, her strong yet charming brain.  He loved her, and he would have her if the skies fell.

It is doubtful if he understood the full force of the attraction between them.  The real energy and deliberation, the unswerving purpose in her magnetized the weakness at the roots of his ardent, impulsive, but unstable character.  Moreover, in spite of the superlative passion which he had aroused in her, she lacked the animal magnetism which was his in abundance.  Her oneness was a magnet for his gregariousness and concentrated it upon herself.  That positive quality in him overwhelmed and intoxicated her; and in intellect he was far more brilliant and far less profound than herself.  His wit and mental nimbleness stung and pricked the serene layers which she had carefully superimposed in her own mind to such activities as mingled playfully with his lighter moods or stimulated him in more intellectual hours.  While the future was yet unbroken and imagination remodelled the face of the world, there were moments when both were exalted with a sense of completeness, and terrified, when apart, with a hint of dissolution into unrelated particles.

When a man and woman arrive at that stage of reasoning and feeling, it were idle for their chronicler to moralize; her part is but to tell the story.

XI

Mary Fawcett encouraged her daughter’s social activity, and as Hamilton’s name entered the rapid accounts of revels and routs in the most casual manner, she endeavoured to persuade herself that the madness had passed with a languid afternoon.  She was a woman of the world, but the one experience that develops deepest insight had passed her by, and there were shades and moods of the master passion over which her sharp eyes roved without a shock.

As she was too feeble to sit up after nine o’clock, she refused to open her doors for the crab hunt, but gave Rachael the key of a little villa on the crest of a peak behind the house, and told her to keep her friends all night if she chose.