And then again the strong desire came upon him to answer it in person, one morning to appear on the riverbank where the—­what was the name?—­the Loulia was tied up, to walk on deck, and say, “I congratulate you on your happiness.”

How amazed his friend would be!  And his enemy—­what would her face be like?

Isaacson always thought of Mrs. Armine as his enemy.  She had come into his life as a spy.  He felt as if from the first moment when she had seen him she had hated him.  She had got the better of him, and she knew it.  Possibly now, because of that knowledge, she would like him better.  She had won out.  Or had she, now that Lord Harwich had an heir?

As he sat there with Nigel’s letter before him, a keen, an almost intense curiosity was alive in Meyer Isaacson.  It was not vulgar, but the natural curiosity of the psychologist about strange human things.  Since the Armines had left London and he had known of their marriage, Isaacson had thought of them often, but a little vaguely, as of people who had quite gone out of his life for a time.  He had to concentrate on his own affairs.  But now, with this letter, despite the great distance between the Armines and himself, they seemed to be quite near him.  All his recollection of his connection with them started up in his mind, vivid and almost fierce.  Especially he remembered the clever woman, the turn of her beautiful head, the look in the eyes contradicting the lovely line of the profile, the irony of her smile, the attractive intonations of her lazy voice.  He remembered his two visits to her, how she had secretly defied him.  He recalled exactly her appearance when he had bade her good-bye for the last time, eight days before she had been married to Nigel.  She had stood by the hearth, in a rose-coloured gown, with smoke-wreaths curling round her.  And she had looked quite lovely in her secret triumph.  But as he went out, he had noticed the tiny wrinkles near her eyes, the slight hardness about her cheek-bones, the cynical droop at the corners of her mouth.

And he had remembered these things when he learnt of the marriage, and he had foreseen disaster.

He smoothed out Nigel’s letter, and he took up his pen to answer it.  Since he could not answer it in person, he must despatch the substitute.  But now the dreary quiet of the London Sunday distressed him as if it were noise.  He found himself listening to it with a sort of anxiety; he felt as if he must struggle against it before he could write sincerely to Nigel.  There was something paralyzing in this dark and foggy peace.

Why was he heaping up money, grasping at fame, dedicating himself to imprisonment within the limits of this house, within this sunless town?  Why was he starving his love of beauty, his natural love of adventure, his quick feeling for romance?  Or was it quick any longer?  Things not encouraged die sometimes.  Certainly, he was starving deliberately much of himself.