Ah, she loved him! There was no doubt about that. And how deeply inevitably it shamed her now to acknowledge it. Her history is the repetition of many a woman’s, and of women less one-minded, less unselfish, more warped by petty jealousies, whose frequency has become habit. But this, the first jealous hour of Mrs. Evremond’s life, was met by a storm of love, in which it was beaten down to the ground as, with a rush, came over her the accumulated tenderness of years, never checked, spontaneously allowed to live in her heart, if never shown to her husband. Instantly purged by its holiness--spiritualized by its unselfishness--she began to wonder if the fault did not lie with herself. “It is never one-sided,” she thought. “He really loved me very much once--why should he stop loving me? If I have not been able to keep my husband’s love, part, at least, of the fault must be mine?” It is rare that when a height is reached, after a painful climb, that the vision is dimmed; the reward of the struggle is sight. Whether or not she fatuously blamed herself, whether or not a stronger-minded woman, zealous for her rights and keen to the sense of hurt honor, would be able to detect _any_ fault in the years of the gentle life, the wife, examining herself, believed she saw clear. She had too readily accepted as a matter of course the idea that devotion promised at the altar is a commodity given over in sacred form and secure from all assaults; hers without future effort. She had slipped into married life too easily, too calmly, and now she thought stupidly, without varying, or seeking to amuse, distract or entertain--without eternally charming the man whom she had once charmed. For her restless and vacillating husband--he was this in her eyes as she mused--she had discovered nothing new in six years. She was a fixture to him--an article of furniture, one with the home, indispensable perhaps as the home itself, but only because, like inanimate things, she had been useful and had made no claim. If she now sought him in judicial manner and demanded confession, renunciation, and all the rest of it, what power remained with her still? Having brought her this far in her musings, the _fiacre_ drove up and stopped. Looking out she saw the _grille_ and the iron lamps hanging lit on either side the posts of the gate, and back of it the garden and her mother’s home. But the sight of this destination brought only a chill to her and no comfort. It was no welcome asylum; she had no desire to fly to her mother’s arms, to weep and pour out her grief. She felt no need of a confidant. She wanted to find some basis of her unchanged loyalty to rest upon--a natural resting place--some strength to take her to her own door.