Lizzie had noted all this in Juliet’s case, but had taken for granted that her own was different; that she formed, for Deering, the exception which every woman secretly supposes herself to formin the experience of the man she loves.  Certainly, she had learned by this time that she could not modify his habits, but she imagined that she had deepened his sensibilities, had furnished him with an “ideal”—­angelic function!  And she now saw that the fact of her letters—­her unanswered letters—­having, on his own assurance, “meant so much” to him, had been the basis on which this beautiful fabric was reared.

There they lay now, the letters, precisely as when they had left her hands.  He had not had time to read them; and there had been a moment in her past when that discovery would have been thesharpest pang imaginable to her heart.  She had traveled far beyond that point.  She could have forgiven him now for having forgottenher; but she could never forgive him for having deceived her.

She sat down, and looked again vaguely about the room.  Suddenly she heard his step overhead, and her heart contracted.  She was afraid he was coming down to her.  She sprang up and bolted the door; then she dropped into the nearest chair, tremulous and exhausted, as if the pushing of the bolt had required an immense muscular effort.  A moment later she heard him on the stairs, andher tremor broke into a cold fit of shaking.  “I loathe you—­I loathe you!” she cried.

She listened apprehensively for his touch on the handle of the door.  He would come in, humming a tune, to ask some idle question and lay a caress on her hair.  But no, the door was bolted; she was safe.  She continued to listen, and the step passed on.  He had not been coming to her, then.  He must have gone down-stairs to fetchsomething—­another newspaper, perhaps.  He seemed to read little else, and she sometimes wondered when he had found time to store the material that used to serve for their famous “literary” talks.  The wonder shot through her again, barbed with a sneer.  At that moment it seemed to her that everything he had ever done and beenwas a lie.

She heard the house-door close, and started up.  Was he going out?  It was not his habit to leave the house in the morning.

She crossed the room to the window, and saw him walking, with a quick decided step, between the budding lilacs to the gate.  What could have called him forth at that unwonted hour?  It was odd that he should not have told her.  The fact that she thought it odd suddenly showed her how closely their lives were interwoven.  Shehad become a habit to him, and he was fond of his habits.  But toher it was as if a stranger had opened the gate and gone out.  She wondered what he would feel if he knew that she felt that.

“In an hour he will know,” she said to herself, with a kind of fierce exultation; and immediately she began to dramatize the scene.  As soon as he came in she meant to call him up to her room and hand him the letters without a word.  For a moment she gloated on the picture; then her imagination recoiled from it.  She was humiliated by the thought of humiliating him.  She wanted to keephis image intact; she would not see him.