Then came the past of his first love-dream, when he worshipped at the feet of Nora Beresford, and, with the whole-heartedness of the true fanatic, clothed his idol with every imaginable attribute of virtue and tenderness.  To this day there remained a secret shrine in his heart wherein the Lady of his young ideal was still enthroned, although it was long since he had come to perceive she had nothing whatever in common with the Nora of reality.  For the real Nora he had no longer any sentiment, she had passed altogether out of his life and thoughts; and yet, so permanent is all influence, whether good or evil, that the effect she wrought upon his character remained.  He recognized tonight that her treatment of him in the past did not count for nothing among the various factors which had determined his fate.

Now, the past of only last year returned, and, strangely enough, this seemed farther removed from him than all the rest.  He had been particularly strong, well, and happy this time last year.  Nora was dismissed from his mind, and he had thrown all his energies into his work.  His tastes were sane and simple, and his dingy, furnished rooms had become through habit very pleasant to him.  In being his own, they were invested with a greater charm than another man’s castle.  Here he had smoked and studied, here he had made many a glorious voyage into the land of books.  Many a homecoming, too, rose up before him out of the dark ungenial streets, to a clear blazing fire, a neatly laid cloth, an evening of ideal enjoyment; many a summer twilight when he mused at the open window, plunging his gaze deep into the recesses of his neighbour’s lime-tree, where the unseen sparrows chattered with such unflagging gaiety.

He had always been given to much daydreaming, and it was in the silence of his rooms of an evening that he turned his phantasmal adventures into stories for the magazines; here had come to him many an editorial refusal, but here, too, he had received the news of his first unexpected success.  All his happiest memories were embalmed in those shabby, badly-furnished rooms.

Now all was changed.  Now might there be no longer any soft indulgence of the hour’s mood.  His rooms and everything he owned belonged now to Esther, too.  She had objected to most of his photographs, and had removed them.  She hated books, and were he ever so ill-advised as to open one in her presence, she immediately began to talk, no matter how silent or how sullen her previous mood had been.  If he read aloud to her she either yawned despairingly, or was tickled into laughter where there was no reasonable cause.  At first Willoughby had tried to educate her, and had gone hopefully to the task.  It is so natural to think you may make what you will of the woman who loves you.  But Esther had no wish to improve.  She evinced all the self-satisfaction of an illiterate mind.  To her husband’s gentle admonitions she replied with brevity that she thought her way quite as good as his; or, if he didn’t approve of her pronunciation, he might do the other thing, she was too old to go to school again.  He gave up the attempt, and, with humiliation at his previous fatuity, perceived that it was folly to expect that a few weeks of his companionship could alter or pull up the impressions of years, or rather of generations.