It seems to him, as he angrily flicks the ash off the end of his cigar, that he had seen nothing but those folding-doors.  His eyes had been riveted upon them.  He—­it was absurd, of course—­but he had in a way seen through them—­seen her—­that little faithless, stormy child, who is playing the very mischief with his life.

    “Ask not her name;
    The light winds whisper it on every hand.”

That is the worst of it!  Rylton gets up, and begins to pace the room.  Her name—­her face——­ He cannot get rid of them.  They seem to haunt him!  And what has he done that she should so deride and scorn him?  Say he was in fault about Marian Bethune.  Well, he was—­grossly in fault, if you like, so far as his having kept silence about his love for her before his marriage.  But afterwards!  He had little or nothing to reproach himself with afterwards.  His married life had been blameless so far as Marian had been concerned.  He had often wondered, indeed, about that—­about that strange coldness he had felt when she had come to stay with them—­with Tita and him.  He had looked forward to her coming, and when she came—­it was a sort of blank!  At the time he hated himself for it, but it was not to be overcome.  However, it was Marian’s own doing.  That last time when she had refused him, he had understood her.  Love with her took a second place.  Money held the reins.

Up and down, up and down the room he goes, smoking and thinking.

    “She
    Whom the gods love—­tranquillity—­”

is far from him to-night.  Why had Tita run away when he went in?  Margaret had told him plainly that she would not see him; she had almost allowed that she hated him, and certainly her whole conduct points that way.  What is to be the end of it, then?  Is he to be bound to her, and she to him, until kindly Death drops in to release them one from the other?  And never a word between them all the time!  It sounds ghastly!  He flings his cigar into the fire, and, seating himself on the edge or the table, gives himself up a prey to evil prognostications.

His thoughts wander, but always they come back to those folding-doors, and the possible vision behind them.

Such a tender vision!  Half child, half woman, wholly sweet, yet a little tyrant in her own way.  The vision behind the folding-doors grows brighter.  A little thing, slender, beautiful, with such bright, earnest eyes, and her lips just smiling and apart, and the soft rings of hair lying on the white forehead.  Behind those doors—­were the eyes glad, or angry, as they so often were—­with him?  With Margaret, no doubt, they were always bright.  She loved Margaret, but him she never loved.  Why should she?  Had he loved her?

It is a terrible question, and all in a moment the answer to it comes to him—­an answer almost as terrible.  He had thought of it, trifled with it, played with it, this question.  But now he knows! Yes, he does love her.  Her, and her only.