common needs of existence. Now that he came to think of it, since he had
left her in Jersey, he had never sent her ever so small a gift. He had
never given her any gifts at all save the Maltese cross in her childhood
--and her wedding-ring. As for the ring, it had never occurred to him
that she could not wear it save in the stillness of the night, unseen by
any eye save her own. He could not know that she had been wont to go to
sleep with the hand clasped to her breast, pressing close to her the one
outward token she had of a new life, begun with a sweetness which was
very bitter and a bitterness only a little sweet.

Philip was in no fitting mood to write a letter. Too many emotions were
in conflict in him at once. They were having their way with him; and,
perhaps, in this very complexity of his feelings he came nearer to being
really and acutely himself than he had ever been in his life. Indeed,
there was a moment when he was almost ready to consign the Duke and all
that appertained to the devil or the deep sea, and to take his fate as it
came. But one of the other selves of him calling down from the little
attic where dark things brood, told him that to throw up his present
chances would bring him no nearer and no sooner to Guida, and must
return him to the prison whence he came.

Yet he would write to Guida now, and send the letter when he was released
from parole. His courage grew as the sentences spread out before him; he
became eloquent. He told her how heavily the days and months went on
apart from her. He emptied out the sensations of absence, loneliness,
desire, and affection. All at once he stopped short. It flashed upon
him now that always his letters had been entirely of his own doings; he
had pictured himself always: his own loneliness, his own grief at
separation. He had never yet spoken of the details of her life,
questioned her of this and of that, of all the little things which fill