people, their strongest quality in common, and kept up no pretence even in outward appearance, unlike most people who keep it up even to themselves.  They hardly spoke of the matter beyond making the necessary arrangements, and when Vassie had a fit of weeping in her room it was for the mother she remembered from her childhood, the mother of stormy tendernesses that nevertheless were sweet to her at the time, and whom she thought of now instead of letting her mind dwell on the woman who had been growing more and more distorted these last few years.

Nevertheless the fabric of their daily lives was torn up, and Ishmael began to see that things could not go on as they were.  Vassie badly needed not only a rest, but a complete change and new interests; she had been living a life of strain lately, and her vigorous personality, unaccustomed to being swamped in that of others and only forced to it by her strong will, began to assert its needs.  For the first time her bloom showed as impaired—­something of her radiance had fled.  Ishmael saw it, and knew that her affection for him would prevent her telling him as long as flesh could bear it.  A Vassie grown fretful was the last thing he wanted, and her marred bloom hurt him; he always, in some odd way, looked on Vassie as a superior being even when he saw her little faults in style—­so much more devastating than faults of character—­most clearly.  It somehow got itself settled that Vassie was to take a charming though impoverished maiden lady, whom the Parson had known for years in Penzance, as chaperon, and was to go and spend the summer at some big seaside place such as she delighted in.  Vassie seemed to glow afresh at the mere notion, at the feel of the crisp bank notes which Ishmael gave her, and which represented all the old ambitions that swelled before her once more like bubbles blown by some magic pipe.  She departed in a whirl of new frocks and sweeping mantles and feathery hats, and a quietness it had never known settled upon Cloom.

For the first few days, even a week or so, Ishmael enjoyed it.  The scenes with Annie had been violent enough to fray the nerves more than he knew, but they had done him the service of putting other thoughts out of his head for the time being.  Now these thoughts came back, but, as the days wore on, with a difference.

In his relations with Blanche the physical side had been hardly counted by him; he had felt passion for the first time, but so refined by his boy’s devotion that he had not given it place.  He had been so aware of what she must have had to confront from other men, and had besides thought her so much younger than she was, that the idea of desire in connection with her, though in the nature of things not entirely eliminated, had yet been kept by him in the background even to himself.  He had loved Blanche as unselfishly as only a woman or a boy can love, and now he began to suffer from it in a manner he had not at the time.