Howat fastened his thoughts on trivial and practical affairs—­the furnishing of the house where he would take Ludowika, what David and himself intended to do with the iron, and then his last, long talk with his mother.  She was astonishingly wise; she had seen far into Ludowika and himself, but even her vision had stopped short of encompassing the magnitude of his passion; she had not realized his new patience and determination.  He found himself counting the gorgeous birds in the bed-hangings—­twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, and stopped abruptly.

It had grown chilly in the room, and Ludowika had an India cashmere shawl about her shoulders.  The sombre garnets and blues hid the tinsel gaiety of her gown and her bare shoulders.  She appeared older than he had ever seen her before.  Her face, carefully studied, showed no trace of beauty; her eyes were heavy, her lips dark; any efforts of animation were suspended.  She showed completely the effect of her life in courts and a careless prodigality of hours and emotions.  Howat, seeing all this, felt only a fresh accession of his hunger for her; she was far more compelling than when romantically viewed as a moon.

He sat with his chin propped on a palm; she was rigidly upright with her arms at her sides; Felix Winscombe moved higher on the pillows.  His eyes glittered in a head like a modelling in clay; his arms stirred ceaselessly with weaving fingers.  Howat could almost feel Ludowika’s hatred striking at him across the bed.  He smiled at her, and she faced him with an expression of stony unresponse.  He thought luxuriantly of her in his arms, with the rain beating on the store house roof; he caught the odours of the damp, heaped merchandise, the distant clamour in the casting shed.  He had a brutal impulse to lean forward and remind her of what had occurred, of the fact that she was his; he wanted to fling it against her present detachment, to mock her with it.  Then he would crush her against his heart.  Felix Winscombe raised up on an elbow, distorting the row of sanguinary Indians.

Ludowika moved to the edge of the bed, and put a firm, graceful arm about him.  A grey shadow of pain fell on Mr. Winscombe’s features.  The silence was absolute.  He seemed to be waiting in an attitude of mingled dread and resolution.  He whispered an unintelligible period, the pain on his face sharpened, and he released himself from Ludowika’s support.  She sank back on her chair, gazing at her husband with wide, concerned eyes.

Slowly the lines in his face deepened, and a fine, gleaming sweat started out on his brow.  His face contorted in a spasm of voiceless suffering, and he drew a stiff hand down either arm.  Howat watched him in a species of strained curiosity, with a suspension of breath.  Something, he felt, should be done to relieve the oppression of agony gathering on Felix Winscombe’s countenance, but a corresponding sense of complete helplessness settled like a leaden coffin about him.  The other became unrecognizable; his face seemed to be set in an unnatural grin.  His head drew back on a thin, corded neck, and a faint gasping for air stirred in the shadows.  Even Howat felt the pain to be unendurable, and Ludowika, white as milk, had risen to her feet.  She stood with a hand half raised beneath a fringed corner of the India shawl.