How would she love such a man?

He began to wonder about that part of her nature dedicated to, designed for, love.

With him she was always perfectly simple, and seemed extremely frank.  But he felt now that in her simplicity she had always been reserved, almost strangely reserved for such a woman.  Perhaps that reserve had been her answer to his plainly shown respect.  Just because of her position, he had been even more respectful to her than he was to other women, following in this a dictate of his temperament.  What would she be like in the unreserve of a great love?

And now a fire was kindled in Nigel, and began to burn up fiercely.  He felt, very consciously and definitely, the fascination of this woman.  Of course, he had always been more or less subject to it.  Isaacson had known that when he saw Nigel draw his chair nearer to hers at the supper-table in the Savoy.  But he had been subject to it without ever saying to himself, “I am in subjection.”  He had never supposed that he was in subjection.  The abrupt consciousness of how it was with him excited him tremendously.  After the long interval of years, was he to feel again the powerful fever, and for a woman how different from the woman he had loved?  She stood, in her young purity, at one end of the chain of years, and Mrs. Chepstow—­did she really stand at the other?

He seemed to see these two looking at each other across the space that was set by Time, and for a moment his face contracted.  But he had changed while traversing that space.  Then he was an eager boy, in the joy of his bounding youth.  Now he was a vigorous man.  And during the interval that separated boy from man had come up in him his strong love of humanity, his passion for the development of the good that lies everywhere, like the ore in gold-bearing earth.  That love had perhaps been given to him to combine the two loves, the altruistic love, and the love for a woman bringing its quick return.

The two faces of women surely softened as they gazed now upon each other.

Such loves in combination might crown his life with splendour.  Nigel thought that, with the enthusiasm which was his birthright, which set him so often apart from other men.  And, moving beneath such a splendour, how absolutely he could defy the world’s opinion!  Its laughter would be music, its sneering word only the signal to a smile.

But—­he must think—­he must think—­

He sprang up, pulled up his loose sleeves to his shoulders, tucked them together, and with bared arms leaned out to the night, holding his hands against his cheeks.

VIII

Mrs. Chepstow had said to Nigel, “Bring Doctor Isaacson—­if he’ll come.”  He had never gone, though Nigel had told him of her words, had told him more than once.  Without seeming deliberately to avoid the visit, he had deliberately avoided it.  He never had an hour to spare in the day, and Nigel knew it.  But he might have gone on a Sunday.  It happened that, at present, on Sundays he was always out of town.