The "noble animal" who has saved you or me from drowning will fly at
your throat or mine, under certain conditions, ten minutes afterward.
Add to the dog's unreasoning instinct the calculating cunning of a man;
suppose yourself to be in a position to say of some trifling thing,
"Curious! at such and such a time I happened to pick up such and such
an object; and now it turns out to be of some use to me!"--and there you
have an index to the state of Geoffrey's feeling toward his friend when
he recalled the past or when he contemplated the future. When Arnold
had spoken to him at the critical moment, Arnold had violently irritated
him; and that was all.

The same impenetrable insensibility, the same primitively natural
condition of the moral being, prevented him from being troubled by the
slightest sense of pity for Anne. "She's out of my way!" was his first
thought. "She's provided for, without any trouble to Me!" was his second.
He was not in the least uneasy about her. Not the slightest doubt
crossed his mind that, when once she had realized her own situation,
when once she saw herself placed between the two alternatives of facing
her own ruin or of claiming Arnold as a last resource, she would claim
Arnold. She would do it as a matter of course; because _he_ would have
done it in her place.

But he wanted it over. He was wild, as he paced round and round the
walnut-tree, to hurry on the crisis and be done with it. Give me my
freedom to go to the other woman, and to train for the foot-race--that's
what I want. _They_ injured? Confusion to them both! It's I who am
injured by them. They are the worst enemies I have! They stand in my
way.

How to be rid of them? There was the difficulty. He had made up his mind