For once in his life Majendie was glad that he had a business. Shipping (he was a ship-owner) was a distraction from the miserable problem that weighed on him at home.

Anne's morning face was cold to him. She lay crushed in her bed. She had had a bad night, and he knew himself to be the cause of it.

His pity for her hurt like passion.

"How is she?" asked Edith, as he came into her room before going to the office.

"She's a wreck," he said, "a ruin. She's had an awful night. Be kind to her, Edie."

Edie was very kind. But she said to herself that if Anne was a ruin that was not at all a bad thing.

Edith Majendie was a loving but shrewd observer of the people of her world. Lying on her back she saw them at an unusual angle, almost as if they moved on a plane invisible to persons who go about upright on their legs. The four walls of her room concentrated her vision in bounding it. She saw few women and fewer men, but she saw them apart from those superficial activities which distract and darken judgment. Faces that she was obliged to see bending over her had another aspect for Edith than that which they presented to the world at large. Anne Majendie, who had come so near to Edith, had always put a certain distance between herself and her other friends. While they were chiefly impressed with her superb superiority, and saw her forever standing on a pedestal, Edith declared that she knew nothing of Anne's austere and impressive attributes. She protested against anything so dreary as the other people's view of her. They and their absurd pedestals! She refused to regard her sister-in-law as an established solemnity, eminent and lonely in the scene. Pedestals were all very well at a proper distance, but at a close view they were foreshortening to the human figure. Other people might like to see more pedestal than Anne; she preferred to see more Anne than pedestal. If they didn't know that Anne was dear and sweet, she did. So did Walter.

If they wanted proof of it, why, would any other woman have put up with her and her wretched spine? Weren't they all, Anne's friends, sorry for Anne just because of it, of her? If you came to think of it, if you traced everything back to the beginning, her spine had been the cause of all Anne's troubles.

That was how she had always reasoned it out. No suffering had ever obscured the lucidity of Edith's mind. She knew that it was her spine that had kept her brother from marrying all those years. He couldn't leave her alone with it, neither could he ask any woman to share the house inhabited, pervaded, dominated by it. Unsafeguarded by marriage, he had fallen into evil hands. To Edith, who had plenty of leisure for reflection, all this had become terribly clear.

Then Anne had come, the strong woman who could bear Walter's burden for him. She had been jealous of Anne at first, for five minutes. Then she had blessed her.

But Edith, as she had told her brother, was not a fool. And all the time, while her heart leapt to the image of Anne in her dearness and sweetness, her brain saw perfectly well that her sister-in-law had not been free from the sin of pride (that came, said Edith, of standing on a pedestal. It was better to lie on a couch than stand on a pedestal; you knew, at any rate, where you were).

Now, as Edith also said, there can be nothing more prostrating to a woman's pride than a bad bilious attack. Especially when it exposes you to the devoted ministrations of a husband you have made up your mind to disapprove of, and compels you to a baffling view of him.

Anne owned herself baffled.

Her attack had chastened her. She had been touched by Walter's kindness, by the evidence (if she had needed it) that she was as dear to him in her ignominious agony as she had been in the beauty of her triumphal health. As he moved about her, he became to her insistent outward sense the man she had loved because of his goodness. It was so that she had first seen his strong masculine figure moving about Edith on her couch, handling her with the supreme gentleness of strength. She had not been two days in the house in Prior Street before her memories assailed her. Her new and detestable view of Walter contended with her old beloved vision of him. The two were equally real, equally vivid, and she could not reconcile them. Walter himself, seen again in his old surroundings, was protected by an army of associations. The manifestations of his actual presence were also such as to appeal to her memory against her judgment. Her memory was in league with her. But when the melting mood came over her, her conscience resisted and rose against them both.

Edith, watching for the propitious moment, could not tell by what signs she would recognise it when it came. Her own hour was the early evening. She had always brightened towards six o'clock, the time of her brother's home-coming.

To-day he had removed himself, to give her her chance with Anne. She could see him pottering about the garden below her window. He had kept that garden with care. He had mown and sown, and planted, and weeded, and watered it, that Edith might always have something pretty to look at from her window. With its green grass plot and gay beds, the tiny oblong space defied the extending grime and gloom of Scale. This year he had planted it for Anne. He had set a thousand bulbs for her, and many thousand flowers were to have sprung up in time to welcome her. But something had gone wrong with them. They had suffered by his absence. As Edith looked out of the window he was stooping low, on acutely bended knees, sorrowfully preoccupied with a broken hyacinth. He had his back to them.

To Edith's mind there was something heart-rending in the expression of that intent, innocent back, so surrendered to their gaze, so unconscious of its own pathetic curve. She wondered if it appealed to Anne in that way. She judged from the expression of her sister-in-law's face that it did not appeal to her in any way at all.

"Poor dear," said she, "he's still worrying about those blessed bulbs of mine—of yours, I mean."

"Don't, Edie. As if I wanted to take your bulbs away from you. I'm not jealous."

"No more am I," said Edie. "Let's say both our bulbs. I wish he wouldn't garden quite so much, though. It always makes his head ache."

"Why does he do it, then?" asked Anne calmly.

Her calmness irritated Edith.

"Oh, why does Walter do anything? Because he's an angel!"

Anne's silence gave her the opening she was looking for.

"You know, you used to think so, too."

"Of course I did," said Anne evasively.

"And equally of course, you don't, now you've married him?"

"I have married him. What more could I do to prove my appreciation?"

"Oh, heaps more. Mere marrying's nothing. Any woman can do that."

"Do you think so? It seems to me that marrying—mere marrying—may be a great deal—about as much as many men have a right to ask."

"Hasn't every man a right to ask for—what shall I say—a little understanding—from the woman he cares for?"

"Edith, what has he told you?"

"Nothing, my dear, that I hadn't seen for myself."

"Did he tell you that I 'misunderstood' him?"

"Did he pose as l'homme incompris? No, he didn't."

"Still—he told you," Anne insisted.

"Of course he did." She brushed the self-evident aside and returned to her point. "He does care for you. That, at least, you can understand."

"No, that's just what I don't understand. I can't understand his caring. I can't understand him. I can't understand anything." Her voice shook.

"Poor darling, I know it's hard, sometimes. Still, you do know what he is."

"I know what he was—what I thought him. It's hard to reconcile it with what he is."

"With what you think him? You can't, of course. I suppose you think him something too bad for words?"

Anne broke down weakly.

"Oh, Edith, why didn't you tell me?"

"What? That Wallie was bad?"

"Yes, yes. It would have been better if you'd told me everything."

"Well, dear, whatever I told you, I couldn't have told you that. It wouldn't have been true."

"He says himself that everything was true."

"Everything probably is true. But then, the point is that you don't know the whole truth, or even half of it. That's just what he couldn't tell you. I should have told you. That's where I bungled it. You know he left it to me; he said I was to tell you."

"Yes, he told me that. He didn't mean to deceive me."

"No more did I. If my brother had been a bad man, dear, do you suppose for a moment I'd have let him marry my dearest friend?"

"You didn't know. We don't know these things, Edith. That's the terrible part of it."

"Yes, it's the terrible part of it. But I knew all right. He never kept anything from me, not for long."

"But, Edith—how could he? How could he? When the woman—Lady Cayley—She was bad, wasn't she?"

"Of course she was bad. Bad as they make them—worse. You know she was divorced?"

"Yes," said Anne, "that's what I do know."

"Well, she wasn't divorced on Walter's account, my dear. There were several others—four, five, goodness knows how many. Poor Walter was a mere drop in her ocean."

Anne stared a moment at the expanse presented to her.

"But," said she, "he was in it."

"Oh yes, he was in it. The ocean swallowed him as it swallowed the others. But it couldn't keep him. He couldn't live in it, like them."

"But how did she get hold of him?"

"She got hold of him by appealing to his chivalry."

(His chivalry—she knew it.)

"It's what happens, over and over again. He thought her a vilely injured woman. He may have thought her good. He certainly thought her pathetic. It was the pathos that did it."

"That—did—it?"

"Yes. Did it. She hurled herself at his head—at his knees—at his feet—-till he had to lift her. And that's how it happened."

Anne's spirit writhed as she contemplated the happening.

"I know it oughtn't to have happened. I know Walter wasn't the holy saint he ought to have been. But oh, he was a martyr!" She paused. "And—he was very young."

"Edith—when was it?"

"Seven years ago."

Anne pondered. The seven years helped to purify him. Every day helped that threw the horror further back in time—separated it from her. If—if he had not been steeped too long in it. She wanted to know how long, but she was afraid to ask; afraid lest it should be brought nearer to her than she could bear. Edith saw her fear.

"It lasted two years. It was all my fault."

"Your fault?"

"Yes, my fault. Because of my horrid spine. You see, it kept him from marrying."

"Well, but—"

"Well, but it couldn't have happened if he had married. How could it? How could it have happened if you had been there? You would have saved him."

She paused on that note, a long, illuminating pause. The note itself was a divine inspiration. It rang all golden. It thrilled to the verge of the dominant chord in Anne. It touched her soul, the mother of brooding, mystic harmonies.

"You would have saved him."

Anne saw herself for one moment as his guardian angel, her mission frustrated through a flaw of time. That vision was dashed by another, herself as the ideal, the star he should have looked to before its dawn, herself dishonoured by his young haste, his passion, his failure to foresee.

"He should have waited for me."

"Did you wait for him?"

A quick flush pulsed through the whiteness of Anne's face. She looked back seven years to her girlhood in the southern Deanery, her home. She had another vision, a vision of a Minor Canon, whom she had loved with the pure worship of her youth, a love of which somehow she was now ashamed. Ashamed, though it had then seemed to her so spiritual. Her dead parents had desired the marriage, but neither she nor they had the power to bring it about.

Edith had never heard of the Minor Canon. She had drawn a bow at a venture.

"My dear," she said, "why not? It's only the very elect lovers who can say to each other, 'I never loved any one but you.'"

"At any rate," said Anne, "I never loved any one else well enough to marry him."

For, in her fancy, the Minor Canon, being withdrawn in time, had ceased to occupy space; he had become that which he was for her girlhood, a disembodied dream. She could not have explained why she was so ashamed of him. What ground of comparison was there between that blameless one and Lady Cayley?

"Edith," she said suddenly, "did you ever see her?"

"Never," said Edith emphatically.

"You don't know what she was like?"

"I don't. I never wanted to. I dare say there are people in Scale who could tell you all about her, only I wouldn't inquire if I were you."

"Did it happen at Scarby?" She was determined to know the worst.

"I believe so."

"Oh—why did I ever go there?"

"He didn't want you to. That was why."

"Where is she now?"

"Nobody knows. She might be anywhere."

"Not here?"

"No, not here. My dear, you mustn't get her on your nerves."

"I'm afraid of meeting her."

"It isn't likely that you ever will. She isn't the sort one does meet—now, poor thing."

"Who was she?"

"The wife of Sir Andrew Cayley, a tallow-chandler."

"Oh, how did Walter ever—"

"My dear, one meets all sorts of funny people in Scale. He was a very wealthy tallow-chandler. Besides, it wasn't he that Walter did meet, naturally."

"How can you joke about it? It makes me sick to think of it."

"It made me sick enough once, dear. But I don't think of it."

"I can't help thinking of it."

"Well, whenever you do, when it does come over you—it will, sometimes—think of what Walter's life was before he knew you. Everything was spoiled for him because of me. He was sent to a place he detested because of me; put into an office which he loathed, shut up here in this hateful house, because of me. And he was good to me, good and dear. Even at the worst he hardly ever left me if he thought I wanted him—not even to go to her. But he was young, and it was an awful life for him; you don't know how awful. It would have been bad enough for a woman. It was intolerable for a man. I was worse then than I am now. I was horribly fretful, and I worried him. I think I drove him to her—I know I did. He had to get away from it sometimes. Won't you think of that?"

"I'll try to think of it."

"And it won't make you not like him?"

"My dear, I liked him first for your sake, then I liked you for his, now I suppose I must like him for yours again."

"No—for his own sake."

"Does it matter which?"

"Not much—so long as you like him. He really is angelic, though you mayn't think it."

"I think you are."

Edith was not only angelic, but womanly and full of guile, and she knew with whom she had to do. She had humbled Anne with shrewd shafts that hit her in all her weak places; now she exalted her. Anne had not her likeness in a thousand. She was a woman magnificently planned, of stature not to be diminished by the highest pedestal. A figure fit for a throne, a niche, a shrine. Edith could see the dear little downy feathers sprouting on Anne's shoulder-blades, and the infant aureole playing in her hair.

"You're a saint," said Edith.

"I am not," said Anne, while her pale cheek glowed with the flattery.

"Of course you are," said Edith, "or you could never have put up with me."

Whereupon Anne kissed her.

"And I may tell Walter what you've said?"

It was thus that she spared Anne's mortal pride. She knew how it would shrink from telling him.

Anne went down to Majendie in the garden and sent him to his sister. They returned to the house by the open window of his study. A bright fire was burning in the room. He looked at her shyly and half in doubt, drew up an arm-chair to the hearth, and left her there.

His manner brought back to her the days of their engagement when that room had been their refuge. Not that they had often been alone together. She could count the times on the fingers of one hand, the times when Edith was too ill to be wheeled into her room. It had been nearly always in Edith's room that she had seen him, surrounded by all the feminine devices, the tender trivialities that were part of the moving pathos of the scene. She had so associated him with his sister that it had been hard for her to realise that he had any separate life of his own. She felt that his love for her had simply grown out of his love for Edith, it was the flame, the flower of his tenderness. It was one with his goodness, and she had been glad to have it so. There was no jealousy in Anne.

It came over her now with a fresh shock, how very little, after all, she had known of him. It was through Edith that she really knew him. And yet it was impossible that Edith could have absorbed him utterly. Anne had not counted his business; for it had not interested her, and to say that Walter was a ship-owner did not define him in the very least. What remained over of Walter was a secret that this room, his study, must partially reveal.

She remembered how she had first come there, and had looked shyly about her for intimations of his inner nature, and how it was his pipe-rack and his boots that had first suggested that he had a life apart and dealings with the outer world. Now she rose and went round the room, searching for its secret, and finding no new impressions, only fresh lights on the old. If the room told her anything it told her how little Majendie had used it, how little he had been able to call anything his own. The things in it had no comfortable look of service. He could not have smoked there much, the curtains were too innocent. He could not have sat in that arm-chair much, the surface was too smooth. He could not have come there much at any time, for, though the carpet was faded, there was no well-worn passage from the threshold to the hearth. As far as she could make out he came there for no earthly purpose but to change his boots before going upstairs to Edith.

The bookcase told the same story. It held histories and standard works inherited from Majendie's father; the works of Dickens, and Thackeray, and Hardy, read over and over again in the days when he had time for reading; several poets whom, by his own confession, he could not have read in any circumstances. One Meredith, partly uncut, testified to an honest effort and a baulked accomplishment. On a shelf apart stood the books that he had loved when he was a boy, the Annuals, the tales of travel and adventure, and one or two school prizes gorgeously bound.

As she looked at them his boyhood rose before her; its dead innocence appealed to her comprehension and compassion.

She knew that he had been disappointed in his ambition. Instead of being sent to Oxford he had been sent into business, that he might early support himself. He had supported himself. And he had stuck to the business that he might the better support Edith.

She could not deny him the virtue of unselfishness.

She remembered one Sunday, three weeks before their wedding-day, when she had stood alone with him in this room, at the closing of their happy day. It was then that he had asked her why she cared for him, and she had answered: "Because you are good. You always have been good."

And he had said (how it came back to her!), "And if I hadn't always? Wouldn't you have cared then?"

She had answered, "I would have cared, but I couldn't marry you."

And he had turned away from her, and looked out of the window, keeping his back to her, and had stood so without speaking for a moment. She had wondered what had come over him.

Now she knew. He had not been good. And she had married him.

At the recollection the thoughts she had quieted stirred again and stung her, and again she trampled them down.

She faced the question how she was going to build up the wedded life that her knowledge of him had laid low. She told herself that, after all, much remained. She had loved Walter for his unhappiness as well as for his goodness. He had needed her, and she had felt that there was no other woman who could have borne his burden half so well. Edith was too sweet to be thought of as a burden, but it could not be denied she weighed. In marrying Walter she would lift half the weight. Anne was strong, and she glorified in her strength. That was what she was there for.

How much more was she prepared to do? Keeping his house was nothing; Nanna had always kept it well. Caring for Edith was nothing; she could not help but care for her. She had promised Walter that she would be a good wife to him, and she had vowed to herself that she would live her spiritual life apart.

Was that being a good wife to him? To divorce her soul, her best self, from him? If she confined her duty to the preservation of the mere material tie, what would she make of herself? Of him?

It came to her that his need of her was deeper and more spiritual than that. She argued that there must be something fine in him, or he never would have appreciated her. That other woman didn't count; she had thrust herself on him. When it came to choosing, he had chosen a spiritual woman! (Anne had no doubt that she was what she aspired to be.) And since all things were divinely ordered, Walter's choice was really God's will. God's hand had led him to her.

It had been a blow to Anne's pride to realise that she had married—spiritually—beneath her. Her pride now recovered wonderfully, seeing in this very inequality its opportunity. She beheld herself superbly seated on an eminence, her spiritual opulence supplying Walter's poverty. Spiritually, she said, it might also be more blessed to give than to receive.

Their marriage, in this its new, its immaterial consummation, would not be unequal. She would raise Walter. That, of course, was what God had meant her to do all the time. Never again could she look at her husband with eyes of mortal passion. But her love, which had died, was risen again; it could still turn to him a glorified and spiritual face; it could still know passion, a passion immortal and supreme.

But it was an emotion of which by its very nature she could not bring herself to speak. It could mean nothing to Walter in his yet unspiritual state. She felt that when he came to her he would insist on some satisfaction, and there was no satisfaction that she could give to the sort of claim he would make. Therefore she awaited his coming with nervous trepidation.

He came in as if nothing had happened. He sank with every symptom of comfortable assurance into the opposite arm-chair. And he asked no more formidable question than, "How's your headache?"

"Better, thank you."

"That's all right."

He did not look at her, but his eyes were smiling as if at some agreeable thought or reminiscence. He had apparently assumed that Anne had recovered, not only from her headache, but from its cause. To Anne, tingling with the tension of a nervous crisis, this attitude was disconcerting. It seemed to reduce her and her crisis to insignificance. She had expected him to be tingling too. He had more cause to.

"Do you mind my smoking? Say if you really do."

She really did, but she forbore to say so. Forbearance henceforth was to be part of her discipline.

He smoked contentedly, with half-closed eyes; and when he talked, he talked of the garden and of bulbs.

Of bulbs, after what he had discussed with Edith upstairs. She would rather that he had asked his question, forced her to the issue. That at least would have shown some comprehension of her state. But he had taken the issue for granted, refused to face the immensity of it all. She had had her first taste of sacrificial flames, and her spirit was prepared to go through fire to reach him. And he presented himself as already folded and protected; satisfied with some inferior and independent secret of his own.

She felt that a little perturbation would have become him more than that impenetrable peace.

It would make it so difficult to raise him.