Yet presently, as it were, a hush of waiting, of tension, fell upon their little party.  Nature offered her best; but there was only an apparent acceptance of her bounties.  Through the outward flow of talk and amusement, of wanderings on lake or hill, ugly hidden forces of pain and strife, regret, misery, resistance, made themselves rarely yet piercingly felt.

Julie drooped again.  Her cheeks were paler even than when Meredith arrived.  Delafield, too, began to be more silent, more absent.  He was helpful and courteous as ever, but it began to be seen that his gayety was an effort, and now and then there were sharp or bitter notes in voice or manner, which jarred, and were not soon forgotten.

Presently, Meredith and the Duchess found themselves looking on, breathless and astonished, at the struggle of two personalities, the wrestle between two wills.  They little knew that it was a renewed struggle—­second wrestle.  But silently, by a kind of tacit agreement, they drew away from Delafield and Julie.  They dimly understood that he pursued and she resisted; and that for him life was becoming gradually absorbed into the two facts of her presence and her resistance.

“On ne s’appuie que sur ce qui resiste.”  For both of them these words were true.  Fundamentally, and beyond all passing causes of grief and anger, each was fascinated by the full strength of nature in the other.  Neither could ever forget the other.  The hours grew electric, and every tiny incident became charged with spiritual meaning.

Often for hours together Julie would try to absorb herself in talk with Meredith.  But the poor fellow got little joy from it.  Presently, at a word or look of Delafield’s she would let herself be recaptured, as though with a proud reluctance; they wandered away together; and once more Meredith and the Duchess became the merest by-standers.

The Duchess shrugged her shoulders over it, and, though she laughed, sometimes the tears were in her eyes.  She felt the hovering of passion, but it was no passion known to her own blithe nature.

And if only this strange state of things might end, one way or other, and set her free to throw her arms round her Duke’s neck, and beg his pardon for all these weeks of desertion!  She said to herself, ruefully, that her babies would indeed have forgotten her.

* * * * *

Yet she stood stoutly to her post, and the weeks passed quickly by.  It was the dramatic energy of the situation—­so much more dramatic in truth than either she or Meredith suspected—­that made it such a strain upon the onlookers.