“Dear Queen Anne,” he said, “I will always do what I can for you.  But I tell you seriously, when a man like Hector loves a woman really, you might as well try to direct Niagara Falls as to turn him any way but the one he means to go.”

“He wants me to be kind to her.  Do you advise me just to let the thing drop, then?”

“No; be as kind as you like—­only don’t assist them to destruction.”

“She goes into the country on Saturday for Whitsuntide, as we all do.  Hector is going down to Bracondale alone.”

“That looks desperate.  I shall see Hector, and judge for myself.”

“You must be sure to go to the ball at Harrowfield House to-night, then,” Anne said.  “They are both going.  I say both because I know she is, and so, of course, Hector will be there too.  I shall go, naturally, and then we can decide what we can do about it after we have seen them together.”

And all this time Theodora was thinking how charming Anne was, and how kind, and that she felt a little happier because of her kindness.  And, hard as it would be, she would not leave Josiah’s side that night or dance with Hector.

And Hector was thinking—­

“What is the good of anything in this wide world without her?  I must see her.  For good or ill, I cannot keep away.”

He was deep in the toils of desire and passionate love for a woman belonging to someone else and out of his reach, and for whom he was hungry.  Thus the primitive forces of nature were in violent activity, and his soul was having a hard fight.

It was the first time in his life that a woman had really mattered or had been impossible to obtain.

He had always looked upon them as delightful accessories:  sport first, and woman, who was only another form of sport, second.

He had not neglected the obligations of his great position, but they came naturally to him as of the day’s work.  They were not real interests in his life.  And when stripped of the veneer of civilization he was but a passionate, primitive creature, like numbers of others of his class and age.

While the elevation of Theodora’s pure soul was an actual influence upon him, he had thought it would be possible—­difficult, perhaps—­but possible to obey her—­to keep from troubling her—­to regulate his passion into worship at a distance.  But since then new influences had begun to work—­prominent among them being jealousy.

To see her surrounded by others—­who were men and would desire her, too—­drove him mad.

Josiah was difficult enough to bear.  The thought that he was her husband, and had the rights of this position, always turned him sick with raging disgust; but that was the law, and a law accepted since the beginning of time.  These others were not of the law—­they were the same as himself—­and would all try to win her.

He had no fear of their succeeding, but, to watch them trying, and he himself unable to prevent them, was a thought he could not tolerate.