disadvantageous bargain. He had not known it would be like this;
and a dull anger gathered at his heart. Anger against whom?
Against his wife, for not knowing what he suffered? Against
Flamel, for being the unconscious instrument of his wrong-doing?
Or against that mute memory to which his own act had suddenly
given a voice of accusation? Yes, that was it; and his punishment
henceforth would be the presence, the unescapable presence, of the
woman he had so persistently evaded. She would always be there
now. It was as though he had married her instead of the other.
It was what she had always wanted--to be with him--and she had
gained her point at last. . . .

He sprang up, as though in an impulse of flight. . . . The sudden
movement lifted his wife's lids, and she asked, in the incurious
voice of the woman whose life is enclosed in a magic circle of
prosperity--"Any news?"

"No--none--" he said, roused to a sense of immediate peril. The
papers lay scattered at his feet--what if she were to see them?
He stretched his arm to gather them up, but his next thought
showed him the futility of such concealment. The same
advertisement would appear every day, for weeks to come, in every
newspaper; how could he prevent her seeing it? He could not
always be hiding the papers from her. . . . Well, and what if she
did see it? It would signify nothing to her, the chances were
that she would never even read the book. . . . As she ceased to
be an element of fear in his calculations the distance between
them seemed to lessen and he took her again, as it were, into the
circle of his conjugal protection. . . . Yet a moment before he
had almost hated her! . . . He laughed aloud at his senseless