He ate steadily, but at times a sensation as though he could not swallow
attacked him. Had he been right to yield to his overmastering hunger of
the night before, and break down the resistance which he had suffered
now too long from this woman who was his lawful and solemnly constituted
helpmate?
He was strangely haunted by the recollection of her face, from before
which, to soothe her, he had tried to pull her hands--of her terrible
smothered sobbing, the like of which he had never heard, and still
seemed to hear; and he was still haunted by the odd, intolerable feeling
of remorse and shame he had felt, as he stood looking at her by the
flame of the single candle, before silently slinking away.
And somehow, now that he had acted like this, he was surprised at
himself.
Two nights before, at Winifred Dartie's, he had taken Mrs. MacAnder
into dinner. She had said to him, looking in his face with her
sharp, greenish eyes: "And so your wife is a great friend of that Mr.
Bosinney's?"
Not deigning to ask what she meant, he had brooded over her words.
They had roused in him a fierce jealousy, which, with the peculiar
perversion of this instinct, had turned to fiercer desire.
Without the incentive of Mrs.
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