a manly spirit.

He felt almost angry with her for the loneliness and the immobility
which pained his chivalry and struck at his sense of pity. If he could
think of her as going away, too, as wandering, in Switzerland, in Italy,
in some lovely place, he would feel all right. But always he saw her
seated in that room, alone, deserted, playing the piano, reading, with
no prospect of company, of change. Mrs. Chepstow had acted her part
well. She had stamped a lonely image upon the retina of Nigel's
imagination.

He was still walking about his room in bare feet. But his cigar had gone
out, though it was still between his lips. The hour was very late. He
heard a distant clock strike two. And just after he had listened to its
chime, followed by other chimes in near and distant places of the city,
the night idea of a strong and young man came to him.

If he could not be friends with Mrs. Chepstow, could he be--the other
thing to her!

He put up his hand to his lips, took away the cigar, and flung it out of
the window violently. And this physical violence was the echo of his
mental violence. She might allow such a thing. Often, if half of what
was said of her was true, she had entered into a similar relation with
other men. He would not believe that "often." He put it differently.
She had certainly entered into a similar relation with some men--perhaps
with two or three, multiplied by scandal--in the past. Would she enter
into it with him, if he asked her? And would he ever ask her?

He threw himself down again in his arm-chair, and stared at his bare