Truth is, he ought never to have had such a feeling, and he would not
have had it, if she had diffused the radiance of love, which would have
made her outer perfectness mere slovenliness beside her inner charm and
magnetism. Very little of all this passed through Crozier's mind, as
with confused vision he looked at her. He had borne the ordeal of the
witness-box in the Logan Trial with superb coolness; he had been in
physical danger over and over again, and had kept his head; he had never
been faced by a human being who embarrassed him--except his own wife.
"There is no fear like that of one's own wife," was the saying of an
ancient philosopher, and Crozier had proved it true; not because of
errors committed, but because he was as sensitive as a girl of
sensibility; because he felt that his wife did not understand him, and he
was ever in fear of doing the wrong thing, while eager beyond telling to
please her. After all, during the past five years, parted from her while
loving her, there had still been a feeling of relief unexplainable to
himself in not having to think whether he was pleasing her or not, or to
reproach himself constantly that he was failing to conform to her
standard.

"How did you come--why? How did you know?" he asked helplessly, as she
made no motion to come nearer; as she kept looking at him with an
expression in her eyes wholly unfamiliar to him. Yet it was not wholly
unfamiliar, for it belonged to the days when he courted her, when she
seemed to have got nearer to him than in the more intimate relations of
married life.

"Is--is that all you have to say to me, Shiel?" she asked, with a
swelling note of feeling in her voice; while there was also emerging in
her look an elusive pride which might quickly become sharp indignation.