vigorous, quick of speech and keen of humour--but only before the world.
In his own home he was fitful of mood, impatient of the grave, meditative
look of his wife, of her resolute tenacity of thought and purpose, of her
unvarying evenness of mood, through which no warmth played. It seemed
to him that if she had defied him--given him petulance for petulance,
impatience for impatience, it would have been easier to bear. If--if he
could only read behind those passionless eyes, that clear, unwrinkled
forehead! But he knew her no better now than he did the day he married
her. Unwittingly she chilled him, and he felt he had no right to
complain, for he had done her the greatest wrong which can be done a
woman. Whatever chanced, Guida was still his wife; and there was in him
yet the strain of Calvinistic morality of the island race that bred him.
He had shrunk from coming here, but it had been far worse than he had
looked for.

One day, in a nervous, bitter moment, after an impatient hour with the
Comtesse, he had said: "Can you--can you not speak? Can you not tell me
what you think?" She had answered quietly:

"It would do no good. You would not understand. I know you in some ways
better than you know yourself. I cannot tell what it is, but there is
something wrong in your nature, something that poisons your life. And
not myself only has felt that. I never told you--but you remember the
day the old Duke died, the day we were married? You had gone from the
room a moment. The Duke beckoned me to him, and whispered 'Don't be
afraid--don't be afraid--' and then he died. That meant that he was
afraid, that death had cleared his sight as to you in some way. He was
afraid--of what? And I have been afraid--of what? I do not know.
Things have not gone well somehow. You are strong, you are brave,
and I come of a family that have been strong and brave. We ought to be