‘I presume he is there at present:  he was in Paris when I left.’

Beauchamp spoke hoarsely and incoherently in contrast with her composure:  ’You will misunderstand me for a day or two, Renee.  I say if you were free I should have my first love mine for ever.  Don’t fear me:  I have no right even to press your fingers.  He may throw you into my arms.  Now you are the same as if you were in your own home:  and you must accept me for your guide.  By all I hope for in life, I’ll see you through it, and keep the dogs from barking, if I can.  Thousands are ready to give tongue.  And if they can get me in the character of a law-breaker!—­I hear them.’

’Are you imagining, Nevil, that there is a possibility of my returning to him?’

‘To your place in the world!  You have not had to endure tyranny?’

’I should have had a certain respect for a tyrant, Nevil.  At least I should have had an occupation in mocking him and conspiring against him.  Tyranny!  There would have been some amusement to me in that.’

‘It was neglect.’

’If I could still charge it on neglect, Nevil!  Neglect is very endurable.  He rewards me for nursing him . . . he rewards me with a little persecution:  wives should be flattered by it:  it comes late.’

‘What?’ cried Beauchamp, oppressed and impatient.

Renee sank her voice.

Something in the run of the unaccented French:  ‘Son amour, mon ami’:  drove the significance of the bitterness of the life she had left behind her burningly through him.  This was to have fled from a dragon! was the lover’s thought:  he perceived the motive of her flight:  and it was a vindication of it that appealed to him irresistibly.  The proposal for her return grew hideous:  and this ever multiplying horror and sting of the love of a married woman came on him with a fresh throbbing shock, more venom.

He felt for himself now, and now he was full of feeling for her.  Impossible that she should return!  Tourdestelle shone to him like a gaping chasm of fire.  And becoming entirely selfish he impressed his total abnegation of self upon Renee so that she could have worshipped him.  A lover that was like a starry frost, froze her veins, bewildered her intelligence.  She yearned for meridian warmth, for repose in a directing hand; and let it be hard as one that grasps a sword:  what matter? unhesitatingness was the warrior virtue of her desire.  And for herself the worst might happen if only she were borne along.  Let her life be torn and streaming like the flag of battle, it must be forward to the end.