Marcella!—­ah!  Marcella!  He gave himself to the thought of her with a new and delightful tenderness which had in it elements of compunction.  After those disagreeable paragraphs in the evening papers, he had instantly written to her.  “Every public man”—­he had said to her, finding instinctively the note of dignity that would appeal to her—­“is liable at some period of his career to charges of this sort.  They are at once exaggerated and blackened, because he is a public man.  To you I owe perfect frankness, and you shall have it.  Meanwhile I do not ask—­I know—­that you will be just to me, and put the matter out of your thoughts till I can discuss it with you.  Two days more till I see your face!  The time is long!”

To this there had been no answer.  Her last letter indeed had rung sadly and coldly.  No doubt Louis Craven had something to do with it.  It would have alarmed him could he simply have found the time to think about it.  Yet she was ready to see him on the 11th; and his confidence in his own powers of managing fate was tougher than ever.  What pleasant lies he had told her at Lady Masterton’s!  Well!  What passion ever yet but had its subterfuges?  One more wrestle, and he would have tamed her to his wish, wild falcon that she was.  Then—­pleasure and brave living!  And she also should have her way.  She should breathe into him the language of those great illusions he had found it of late so hard to feign with her; and they two would walk and rule a yielding world together.  Action, passion, affairs—­life explored and exploited—­and at last—­“que la mort me treuve plantant mes choulx—­mais nonchalant d’elle!—­et encore plus de mon jardin imparfaict!”

He declaimed the words of the great Frenchman with something of the same temper in which the devout man would have made an act of faith.  Then, with a long breath and a curious emotion, he went to try and sleep himself into the new day.

CHAPTER XV.

The following afternoon about six o’clock Marcella came in from her second round.  After a very busy week, work happened to be slack; and she had been attending one or two cases in and near Brown’s Buildings rather because they were near than because they seriously wanted her.  She looked to see whether there was any letter or telegram from the office which would have obliged her to go out again.  Nothing was to be seen; and she put down her bag and cloak, childishly glad of the extra hour of rest.

She was, indeed, pale and worn.  The moral struggle which had filled the past fortnight from end to end had deepened all the grooves and strained the forces of life; and the path, though glimmering, was not wholly plain.

A letter lay unfinished in her drawer—­if she sent it that night, there would be little necessity or inducement for Wharton to climb those stairs on the morrow.  Yet, if he held her to it, she must see him.