He had a mingled sense of the truth and futility of her words.  It was as if his passion stood apart from them, dominating them, lashing him with desire.  Nothing she might say, no necessity nor effort, could free them.  The uselessness of words smote him.  She spoke again, an urgent flow of dulcet sound against his ear; but it was without meaning, lost in the drumming of his blood.  The stir of feet approached, and he released her, moving to the fireplace.  It was Caroline.  She stopped awkwardly, advancing a needless explanation of a trivial errand from the doorway, and vanished.

His position at Myrtle Forge was fast becoming impossible.  There would be an explosion now at any moment.  He took the fire tongs and idly rearranged the wood on the hearth.  The flames blazed more brightly, their reflection squirmed over the lacquer frames on the walls, gleamed richly on polished black walnut, and fell across the Turkey floor carpet.  It even reached through the pale candle light and flickered on Ludowika’s dull red gown, flowered and clouded with blue.  She was turned away from him, against the window; her shoulders drooped in an attitude of dejection.  The flames died away again.

IX

Ludowika’s manner toward him became self-possessed, even animated; and, Howat thought, preoccupied.  She was expectant, with a slightly impatient air, as if she were looking beyond his shoulder.  The cause occurred to him in a flash that ignited his anger like a ready-charged explosive.  She was waiting, desiring, the return of her husband.  Felix Winscombe, she thought, would mean—­escape.  He used the word deliberately, realizing that that now expressed her attitude toward the Province, toward him.  It made no difference in his feeling for her, his determination that nothing should take her from him.  His power of detachment vanished; he became utterly the instrument of his passion.

He didn’t press upon her small expressions of his emotion; somehow, without struggle, she had made them seem foolish; beyond that they were inadequate.  He was conscious of the approach of a great climax; his feeling was above the satisfaction of trivial caresses.  Soon, he told himself, soon he would absolutely possess her, for as long as they lived.  Ultimately she must be happy with him.  He thought the same things in a ceaseless round; he walked almost without sight, discharging mechanically the routine of daily existence; answering inevitable queries in a perfunctory, dull voice.  Myrtle Forge made a distant background of immaterial colours and sounds for the slightly mocking figure of Ludowika.

In mid-afternoon David arrived with a face stung scarlet by beating wind, and a clatter of hoofs.  He immediately found Gilbert Penny, and the two men sat together with grave faces, lowered voices.  Howat, who had left the counting house at the sound of the hurried approach, caught a few words as he drew near the others: