“But a man should have something to say about boys.  He understands them.”

“You should have thought of that before.”

“They haven’t been old enough.”

“If you had taken your share of responsibility for them, I would listen to you.”

“Maude!” I exclaimed reproachfully.

“No, Hugh,” she went on, “you have been too busy making money.  You have left them to me.  It is my task to see that the money they are to inherit doesn’t ruin them.”

“You talk as though it were a great fortune,” I said.

But I did not press the matter.  I had a presentiment that to press it might lead to unpleasant results.

It was this sense of not being free, of having gained everything but freedom that was at times galling in the extreme:  this sense of living with a woman for whom I had long ceased to care, a woman with a baffling will concealed beneath an unruffled and serene exterior.  At moments I looked at her across the table; she did not seem to have aged much:  her complexion was as fresh, apparently, as the day when I had first walked with her in the garden at Elkington; her hair the same wonderful colour; perhaps she had grown a little stouter.  There could be no doubt about the fact that her chin was firmer, that certain lines had come into her face indicative of what is called character.  Beneath her pliability she was now all firmness; the pliability had become a mockery.  It cannot be said that I went so far as to hate her for this,—­when it was in my mind,—­but my feelings were of a strong antipathy.  And then again there were rare moments when I was inexplicably drawn to her, not by love and passion; I melted a little in pity, perhaps, when my eyes were opened and I saw the tragedy, yet I am not referring now to such feelings as these.  I am speaking of the times when I beheld her as the blameless companion of the years, the mother of my children, the woman I was used to and should—­by all canons I had known—­have loved....

And there were the children.  Days and weeks passed when I scarcely saw them, and then some little incident would happen to give me an unexpected wrench and plunge me into unhappiness.  One evening I came home from a long talk with Nancy that had left us both wrought up, and I had entered the library before I heard voices.  Maude was seated under the lamp at the end of the big room reading from “Don Quixote”; Matthew and Biddy were at her feet, and Moreton, less attentive, at a little distance was taking apart a mechanical toy.  I would have tiptoed out, but Biddy caught sight of me.

“It’s father!” she cried, getting up and flying to me.

“Oh, father, do come and listen!  The story’s so exciting, isn’t it, Matthew?”

I looked down into the boy’s eyes shining with an expression that suddenly pierced my heart with a poignant memory of myself.  Matthew was far away among the mountains and castles of Spain.