Captain Margaret had his little hell about him; the days were bitter to him. All day long, and through the night, he had the image of his dishonour with him. All the weeks of deceit, all the acts of deceit, all the long strain of pretence; they were all over. They had ended in her hating and suspecting him. He would lie awake in the night, and the memory of his deceit would eat into him like acid, burning. He would blush, lying there in his bunk, at the thought of his baseness; it stuck in his throat, now that he could see things clearly. He had eaten dirt in a vile cause; all honest men must loathe him, he thought. Then came another memory, the memory of Olivia, her beauty, her paleness, her voice, her sorrow. It was bitter to him to feel that he was the bitterest part of her sorrow, and that he could not help her, nor comfort her, but only prompt Perrin to help her. He tried to tell himself that her beauty was an excuse for him. His love had been noble enough; it had not been selfish; he had had little joy of the ignoble things he had done for her sake. He wished that some spirit would surround his tortured head with heavenly essence, so that he might see clearly, as God sees, all the moral value of his acts, all the right and the wrong, in fiery letters, easy to read. She was very beautiful, and still young. Meanwhile he had his life to live, and his task to do. It was not going to be an easy task. He was coming to it broken. His only comfort in these days was the knowledge that Stukeley had lied when he had said that Olivia was going to have a child. That horror was removed for ever. Stukeley had lied. He prayed that some day the patient fates would take Stukeley, and show him, for an instant, before death, the image of himself. He needed not to have prayed. To most of us the patient fates come, holding up that image. Besides, Margaret knew well that Stukeley had had his image spoiled for him by the accident of his birth. The man loved animals; was truly kind and thoughtful with them. He should have been a groom, a hunt groom, with an alehouse and ostlers for his evenings. Margaret could see Stukeley holding up his hands, when his image came to him, saying that it was not his own work, but the work of the drunken fox-hunter his father, who came home bloody from the mangling of a fox, to give his little son drink, and to egg him on to kiss the maids.