Dacier set foot on his carriage-step.  He drew a long breath to say a short farewell, and he and Diana parted.

They parted as the plainest of sincere good friends, each at heart respecting the other for the repression of that which their hearts craved; any word of which might have carried them headlong, bound together on a Mazeppa-race, with scandal for the hounding wolves, and social ruin for the rocks and torrents.

Dacier was the thankfuller, the most admiring of the two; at the same time the least satisfied.  He saw the abyss she had aided him in escaping; and it was refreshful to look abroad after his desperate impulse.  Prominent as he stood before the world, he could not think without a shudder of behaving like a young frenetic of the passion.  Those whose aim is at the leadership of the English people know, that however truly based the charges of hypocrisy, soundness of moral fibre runs throughout the country and is the national integrity, which may condone old sins for present service; but will not have present sins to flout it.  He was in tune with the English character.  The passion was in him nevertheless, and the stronger for a slow growth that confirmed its union of the mind and heart.  Her counsel fortified him, her suggestions opened springs; her phrases were golden-lettered in his memory; and more, she had worked an extraordinary change in his views of life and aptitude for social converse:  he acknowledged it with genial candour.  Through her he was encouraged, led, excited to sparkle with the witty, feel new gifts, or a greater breadth of nature; and thanking her, he became thirstily susceptible to her dark beauty; he claimed to have found the key of her, and he prized it.  She was not passionless:  the blood flowed warm.  Proud, chaste, she was nobly spirited; having an intellectual refuge from the besiegings of the blood; a rockfortress.  The ’wife no wife’ appeared to him, striking the higher elements of the man, the commonly masculine also.—­Would he espouse her, had he the chance?—­ to-morrow! this instant!  With her to back him, he would be doubled in manhood, doubled in brain and heart-energy.  To call her wife, spring from her and return, a man might accept his fate to fight Trojan or Greek, sure of his mark on the enemy.

But if, after all, this imputed Helen of a decayed Paris passed, submissive to the legitimate solicitor, back to her husband?

The thought shot Dacier on his legs for a look at the blank behind him.  He vowed she had promised it should not be.  Could it ever be, after the ruin the meanly suspicious fellow had brought upon her?—­Diana voluntarily reunited to the treacherous cur?

He sat, resolving sombrely that if the debate arose he would try what force he had to save her from such an ignominy, and dedicate his life to her, let the world wag its tongue.  So the knot would be cut.