aged, she seemed to be not a room away from him, but a thousand rooms
away. He saw it with no reproach to himself. He forgot it was he who
had left her room, and had set up his own tabernacle, because his hours
differed from hers, and because she tossed in her bed at nights, and that
made him restless too.

Yet, if his love had been the real thing, he would have stayed, because
their lives were so similar, and the rules of domestic life in French
Canada were so fixed. He had spoiled his own household, destroyed his
own peace, forsaken his own nest, outlived his hope and the possibility
of further hope, except more business success, more to leave behind him.

That was the stern truth. Had he been a different man the devotion his
wife had shown would have drawn him back to her; had she been a different
woman, unvexed by a horrible remembrance, she would have made his soul
her own and her soul his own once again. She had not dared to tell him
the truth; afraid more for her boy's sake than for her own. She had been
glad that Tarboe had helped to replace the broken link with Fabian, that
he had taken the place which Carnac, had he been John Grier's son, ought
to have taken. She could not blame Carnac, and she could not blame her
husband, but the thing ate into her heart.

John Grier found her sitting by her table in the great living-room,
patient and grave, and yet she smiled at him, and rose as he came into
the room. His troubled face brought her forward quickly. She stretched
out a hand appealingly to him.

"What's the matter, John? Has anything upset you?"

"I'm not upset."