For now there was plenty of room and leisure in his life for these subtler
bonds. The day of great passions was gone by. There were one or two
incidents in his earlier manhood on which he could look back with the
half-triumphant consciousness that no man had dived deeper to the heart of
feeling, had drunk more wildly, more inventively, of passion than he, in
more than one country of Europe, in the East as in the West. These events
had occurred in those wander-years between twenty and thirty, which he had
spent in travelling, hunting and writing, in the pursuit, alternately eager
and fastidious, of as wide an experience as possible. But all that was
over. These things concerned another man, in another world. Politics and
ambition had possessed him since, and women now appealed to other instincts
in him--instincts rather of the diplomatist and intriguer than of the
lover. Of late years they had been his friends and instruments. And by
no unworthy arts. They were delightful to him; and his power with them
was based on natural sympathies and divinations that were perhaps his
birthright. His father had had the same gift. Why deny that both his father
and he had owed much to women? What was there to be ashamed of? His father
had been one of the ablest and most respected men of his day and so far as
English society was concerned, the son had no scandal, nor the shadow of
one, upon his conscience.

How far did Eleanor divine him? He raised his shoulder with a smile.
Probably she knew him better than he knew himself. Besides, she was no
mere girl, brimful of illusions and dreaming of love-affairs. What a
history!--Good heavens! Why had he not known and seen something of her in
the days when she was still under the tyranny of that intolerable husband?
He might have eased the weight a little--protected her--as a kinsman may.
Ah well--better not! They were both younger then.--