The sight of Bosinney, with his haggard face, and his
restless eyes always wandering to the clock, had roused in him a pity,
with which was mingled strange, irresistible envy.
He knew the signs so well. Whither was he going--to what sort of fate?
What kind of woman was it who was drawing him to her by that magnetic
force which no consideration of honour, no principle, no interest could
withstand; from which the only escape was flight.
Flight! But why should Bosinney fly? A man fled when he was in danger
of destroying hearth and home, when there were children, when he felt
himself trampling down ideals, breaking something. But here, so he had
heard, it was all broken to his hand.
He himself had not fled, nor would he fly if it were all to come over
again. Yet he had gone further than Bosinney, had broken up his own
unhappy home, not someone else's: And the old saying came back to him:
'A man's fate lies in his own heart.'
In his own heart! The proof of the pudding was in the eating--Bosinney
had still to eat his pudding.
His thoughts passed to the woman, the woman whom he did not know, but
the outline of whose story he had heard.
An unhappy marriage! No ill-treatment--only that indefinable malaise,
that terrible blight which killed all sweetness under Heaven; and so
from day to day, from night to night, from week to week, from year to
year, till death should end it.
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