the opera house he had sense of a premonition almost occult in power
that the terrible destiny which had her in its clutch was gathering
energy for some pitiless catastrophe With characteristic patience he
searched his own conscience, the incidents of his daily life, and held
himself rather than his wife to account. After all, he was the stronger
of the two, and yet when had he put forth his strength or his pity on
her behalf? In the closer human relations mere indifference showed
suddenly as sin, and the sluggish spirit which had controlled his
married life appeared in his memory as a form of moral apathy. Was a
human soul so small a thing that it could perish at his side and he be
none the Wiser? What was his boasted intellect worth if it could
paralyse the human part of him and exhaust the fount of his compassion?
In his widening vision he saw that in the spirit of things humanity is
one and indivisible, a single organism held together by a common pulse
of life. To live or to die apart he realised, is beyond the scope of an
individual destiny, for in the eye of God each man that lives is the
keeper not of his own but of his brother's soul.

The self reproach which moved in his heart impelled him so rapidly upon
his way that when he reached the doors he had still an hour to wait
before the opera ended. Remembering that if he were so fortunate to find
Connie he must take her home, he went to a livery stable for a carriage,
and then coming back, walked nervously up and down upon the frozen
pavement. His mind was divided between the fear that she might leave by
another entrance--that he might miss her altogether--and the more
horrible dread that in seeing her he should be unable to prevail upon
her to come away. She might, he felt, demand a reason, exact from him
the meaning of his unexpected appearance; there was even a hideous
possibility that she might fly into a temper.