She glanced downwards with averted head, awaiting some outcry of gladness, surrendering herself to the quick clasp of strong arms.  But no outcry came, and no arms clasped.  She glanced up, and met a stricken look in the man’s eyes.

For Jaffery could not find a word to utter.  A chill crept about his heart and his blood became as water.  He could not move; a nightmare horror of dismay held him in its grip.  The inconceivable had happened.  He no longer desired her.  The woman who had haunted his thoughts for over two years, for whom he had made quixotic sacrifices, for whom he had made a mat of his great body so that she should tread stony paths without hurt to her delicate feet, was his now for the taking—­nobly self-offered—­and with all the world as an apanage he could not have taken her.  The phenomenon of sex he could not explain.  Once he had desired her passionately.  The ivory-white of her daintiness had fired his blood.  He had fought with beasts.  He had wrestled with his soul in the night watches.  He had loved her purely and sweetly, too.  But now, as she stood before him, recoiling a little from his fixed stare of pain, though she had suffered but little loss in beauty and in that of her which was desirable, he realised, in a kind of paralysis, that he desired her no more, that he loved her no more with the idealised love he had given to the elfin princess of his dreams.  Not that he would not still do her infinite service.  The pathos of her broken life moved him to an anguish of pity.  For her soothing he would give all that life held for him, save one thing—­which was no longer his to give.  Another man glib of tongue and crafty of brain might have lied his way out of an abominable situation.  But Jaffery’s craft was of the simplest.  He could not trick the dead love into smiling semblance of life.  His nature was too primitive.  He could only stare in spellbound affright at the icy barrier that separated him from Doria.

“I see,” she said tonelessly, moving slowly away from him.  “Your feelings have changed.  I am sorry.”

Then he found power of motion and speech.  He threw out his arms.  “My God, dear, forgive me!” he groaned, and sat down and clutched his head in his hands.  She returned to the window and looked out at the rain.  And there she fought with her woman’s indignant humiliation.  And there was a long, dead silence, broken only by the faintly heard notes of Susan’s piano in the nursery and the splash of water on the terrace.

Presently all that was good in Doria conquered.  She crossed the room and laid a light hand on Jaffery’s head.  It was the finest moment in her life.

“One can’t help these things.  I know it too well.  And no hearts are broken.  So it’s all for the best.”

He groaned again.  “I didn’t know.  I’d like to shoot myself.”

She smiled, conscious of feminine superiority.  “If you did, I should die, too.  I tell you, it’s all for the best.  I love you as I never loved you before.  I usen’t to love you a little bit.  But I should have had to learn to love you as a wife—­and it might have been difficult.”