what he had first told himself was quite unfounded, some little fresh incident occurred, some fragment more of what was now a complete pattern. Sometimes it would be a few inaudible words, sometimes a look that passed between them; sometimes it was the feeling that inwardly Lucia winced at his own touch, at his very proximity. It seldom happened that she showed this, for she was on her guard, but now and then the truth of it was forced upon him, and what made the truth more patent to him was that whenever she had betrayed this, however slightly, she immediately afterwards was demonstratively affectionate to him. But he was by no means a fool, also he was still in love with her, and he could distinguish very well between a tenderness that was diplomatic and a tenderness that was spontaneous. Then by degrees with a growing bitterness and hardness he thought over all the history of their marriage, and asked himself whether she had ever loved him, or whether she had even from the first only tolerated him. And that question, and the answer which he feared to give to it, stung him into an anger and resentment that made his heart iron to her. How far she had seen this he did not know; but it was with an added sense of humiliation that he saw her relief at the growing rareness of his caresses, and at their ultimate cessation. He was naturally proud, and the position was intolerable, while his very pride prevented him from speaking to Lucia on the subject. Slowly through these weeks his suspicion had deepened into certainty, and now he was watching her, not with a sense of the unworthiness of doing so, but with a sense that it was his duty. It was no wonder then that Lucia's expressed desire to go yachting with him alone, to the exclusion of Charlie, failed to disarm his suspicions. What that meant he did not know for certain, but it seemed probable at least that she had become aware of them, and was attempting, with what now seemed to him transparent futility, to convince him of their groundlessness.
But, as has been seen, he fell in with her suggestion that they should cruise alone; for, since he had loved her, and in love there is something immortal, so that the utmost wounding cannot quite do it to death, he still had hold on the desperate hope that he had been wrong throughout. If he considered that with his reason, it seemed a possibility not to be dreamed of; but since he had loved her, his past love still dreamed of it. Away, alone with her, in the solitude of another honeymoon, he would be able to test that. But in the interval suspicion blackened and em-
