of lovers; it lacked the hidden intimacies which come of only one experience. They were a little formal, a little strange. The flame that leapt between them was not quite clear and white and unhindered; there were obstructions, misunderstandings. It was a complicated relationship, one could see at a glance, and a little ridiculous. Even Callendar, so clearly a man of the world, so clearly a man who was neither an innocent nor a yokel, was not at his ease.
"Mr. Callendar," said Ellen, "is an old friend of mine. Until the other day I had not seen him for years."
But for Fergus this could have been no explanation. It told nothing of all that passed in those missing years, nothing of the intriguing of old Thérèse, nothing of the slow passion, fed upon absence and memories that instead of dying had, as Thérèse knew, gained strength. It revealed nothing of all the forces, conscious or blundering and obscure, which had been at work weaving the slow web that was now near to its end. Fergus alone guessed how nearly it was finished. It came to him in a return of that sudden flight of clairvoyance which had seized him in the dark street outside the door. He understood with an unearthly certainty that this was the man whom fate (that nonsensical force) had marked for his sister. This was the man destined to know all the tempestuous sweep of her fierce energy, her vast capacity for devotion, all the forces that until now had lain buried and dormant. This perilous man . . . (It was strange that strong women were likely to be unhappy in love, to make so often a choice which all the world, even the stupidest fellow, could have told her was wrong.)
It was this current of thought which ran beneath the surface of all their polite conversation, made so scrupulously, with such labor in defiance of that strain which none—not even Callendar, who perhaps chose to make no such effort—could dissipate. For Ellen's moment had passed swiftly as such moments, awaited so long, are likely to pass. There had been a quick flare of delight in the possession of them both and then this confused disappointment and sense of ill-ease clouding everything.
