they were the slaves and toys of men, as they must always be when they are happy.
Her face would have been a pretty one under the conditions of content and happiness, the face of a woman made to honour and worship the man whom she recognised as her master. It was feminine to the core, although it had been petrified by disillusions. "Curse the man who had wrought this woeful change," thought Philip as he watched that face, for only a man could have done it, and the alteration must have been the work of time, as the soft sands of past ages have been turned into stone by slow degrees, degrees of hardening with, perhaps, the final convulsion which buried all from the light of hope.
She had a fair face this lonely Mrs Austin. The features were Greek-like, sensitive and refined; while they lived they had been mobile and quick to flash into warmth, the red lips to part lovingly, the eyes to become deep and lustrous, the oval cheeks to flush with rosy dyes, and the brown hair to gleam with sunshine. She had once been a woman tender and pulsating, she was now a statue calm and cold.
He had looked at that face day after day, and built up its history in his own heart. He did not love her, for he could as yet love no one, but he had the interest that a tender brother might feel towards a broken sister. He remembered his religious, remorseless wife, and how he had flung his own heart against her strong nature, as the yielding surf beats against the boulders in vain to move the impediment. So must this woman have beaten upon the iron nature the warm waves of her passion until the tide went down, and lay still after the storm of love was past.
He was a disappointed and lonely man, she was a disappointed and lonely woman. Neither of them had
