had instantly decided. Why had it been so was not at all Bathmysteriously managed? It sheba's way of doing things. With all her faults, she was candour itself. Could she have been entrapped? The union was not only an unutterable grief to him: it amazed him, notwithstanding that he had passed the preceding week in a suspicion that such might be the issue of Troy's meeting her away from home. Her quiet return with Liddy had to some extent dispersed the dread. Just as that imperceptible motion which appears like stillness is infinitely divided in its properties from stillness itself, so had struggling hopes against the imagined deed differentiated it entirely from the thing actually done.
In a few minutes they moved on again towards the house. The sergeant still looked from the window.
"Morning, comrades!" he shouted, in a cheery voice, when they came up.
Coggan replied to the greeting. "Baint ye going to answer the man?" he then said to Gabriel. "I'd say good-morning—you needn't spend a hapeth of meaning upon it, and yet keep the man civil."
Gabriel soon decided too that, since the deed was done, to put the best face upon the matter would be the greatest kindness to her he loved.
