"Old man," he cried suddenly, "thank your God you have never had that to fight against--to live chained to a woman you loathe, and to know that a word will give you the love you crave for. And sometimes"--his voice sank to a whisper--"sometimes my little lady, in her innocence and passion, entreats me to take her away somewhere, and end it all. Then, Lomax, it is just hell." Griff was driven to bay, as we all are when our friends force us to be helpless spectators of their distress. "Do you remember the advice you once gave me--to cut and run, and snatch happiness while I could? A man, you say, doesn't beat his wings against the cage--but you are doing it," he said, impotently. Roddick turned and blazed out on him. "Do you know what that would mean for Janet? Do you know that I'd pawn my beggarly soul to save her little finger an ache?" "Can't you get a divorce?" said Griff, breaking a long silence. "No valid excuse, or shouldn't I have jumped at it? A woman may drink one's good name away and attempt one's life, and be faithful for all that. Drink comes under the sickness or health, richer or poorer, clause." Griff also rose from his chair and fidgeted nervously up and down the floor. "I'm off, Roddick," he said at last. "God help you, old fellow!" Roddick grinned. "I used to say that, but I had less experience then. You're not going to leave me yet. I'll saddle the grey, and we must have a gallop together. There's nothing like a horse for driving sanity into a man." But all along the road, gallop, canter, or trot, Griff could not rid himself of the burden-- "If only the woman would die; if only the woman would die." CHAPTER XVII. IN WHICH MRS. LOMAX GROWS ANGRY. They had been at the Manor for a week, Kate and he, before it seriously occurred to Griff that they could not go on living here for ever. Mrs. Lomax had been very urgent, more than once since his return, that they should make the Manor their home; but Griff knew his mother too well to dream for a moment that she could endure a second mistress in the house. Kate was as strong and unbending in some ways as the older woman, and the position was sure to be productive, in the long run, of jar and discomfort. So Griff went for a long walk one afternoon, in order to think out what was best to be done. To tell his mother straightforwardly that it was time he sought a house elsewhere seemed likely to result in a quarrel between them; and he shirked the idea of that more instinctively than he shrank from the thought of letting their lives drift into a state of perpetual, half-felt friction. At the end of his walk he was no nearer to a solution of the difficulty than when he started, and he turned into the Bull, not feeling over anxious to meet his women-folk while he was still in this pitiable state of doubt. "You're looking bothered, like, Mr. Lummax," said the landlord, bustling in to serve his favourite customer.