Thorne leaned on the fence of the field where he had first seen Pocahontas, and went over his former experience of love.  What a miserable thing it had been, at best!  How feverish, vapory and unsatisfying!  What a wretched fiasco his marriage had proved!  And yet he had loved his wife!  Her beauty was of a type that insures its possessor love of a certain sort—­not the best, but strong enough to stand the wear and tear of well-to-do existence, if only it is returned.  If Ethel had loved him, Thorne would have held to his lot, and munched his husks, if not with relish, certainly with decency and endurance.  But Ethel did not love him.

Their marriage, from Ethel’s standpoint, had been mercantile; for his wealth and position, she had willingly bartered her youth and beauty, and if he would have been content with face value, she would have been content.  Why should people trouble the depths of life when the surface was so pleasant and satisfying?  She liked Thorne well enough, but his ceaseless craving for congeniality, deep affection, community of interest, and the like, wearied, bored and baffled her.  Why should they care for the same things, cultivate similar tastes, have corresponding aspirations?  If they differed in thought and life and expression, let them differ—­it was of no consequence.  She found her husband’s exactions tiresome.  He had her birthright, she had his pottage; let the matter end there, and each be satisfied.

But Thorne was not satisfied.  He had married a transcendently beautiful woman, but he had no wife.  Half the men of his acquaintance envied him, but he did not rejoice, nor plume himself.  He wanted his wife to lean on him, to clothe the strength of his manhood with the grace of her womanhood—­and his wife showed herself not only capable of standing alone, but of pushing him away with both hands.  His mood underwent many changes, and finally he let her go, with some disgust, and a deep inward curse at his past folly.  It was not a pleasant retrospect.

Night had fallen; the air was still and brooding; across the sky scudded ragged masses of clouds, advanced guard of the storm that was mustering along the horizon; everywhere there was a feeling that foreboded snow.  In the sky, few stars were visible, and those glimmered with a cold, wan light; at the zenith a solitary planet burned steadfastly.  The road stretched away into the night; it was dark under the trees beside the fence; away in the distance the echo of footsteps sounded.

Thorne thought of Pocahontas.  His face softened, and his eyes shone tenderly.  How true she was, how thorough and noble.  Her pure face and fearless gray eyes rose before him; with the love of such a woman to bless him, her hand in his, her influence surrounding him, to what might not a man aspire!  There were no insincerities, no half-truths, no wheels within wheels, such as Ethel delighted in, about this other woman.  Even her occasional fits of impatience and temper were indulged in frankly—­a sudden flurry of tempest and then the bright, warm sunshine; no long-continued murkiness, and heavy sodden depression for hours and days.