“At all events he has nothing to complain of at present,” he remarked. “Nothing, except that he is not the man to take good care of what he has obtained. Born irresolute--there’s a disadvantage of birth as bad as any other. Yet, I’d exchange my own for it; I’d accept to have only myself to overcome. Yes, by God, I’ve no sympathy for him. Why doesn’t he carry away his conquest? Too uncertain of his own worth? Look at his face--haggard with doubt of himself. I scarcely envy Calladine. He’s a straw to be swept away by a strong current, safe only so long as he may lie in shelter. If I wanted to undo Calladine, I should say to him, ‘Are you sure that you are the man to hold so untamed a thing?’ As yourself, I mean, Miss Warrener. Or am I mistaken? Are you a lady at heart--a lady and not a woman? Mrs. Richard Calladine. The muslin dress, or the shepherd’s cap? If the muslin dress, then go to Calladine. If the shepherd’s cap, then....” He paused. “I should not listen to you, reducing Mr. Calladine to this insignificance,” murmured Clare in great distress. Calladine had become a shadow; a poor grey wisp drained of blood. Only Lovel and herself seemed alive, so terribly alive that the wraith which was Calladine faded between them. So far, no one had noticed them standing up on the ridge of the embankment; the night was, as Clare had said, very dark, and furthermore a few sparse trees helped to conceal them. They stood, not very far from one another, very much isolated, detached from the glow and excitement of the fire down in the field below, as though they were two travellers come to a brief surveying pause on the road which they pursued together. “Mr. Calladine is not the poor creature you think him,” said Clare on an impulse. “Years ago he loved a woman, still unforgotten. That is not the fidelity of a weak man. I tell you this, in order that you should think better of him, and knowing that you will keep it to yourself.” “A woman he never got?” said Lovel. “And brooded over her ever since? Do not doubt--Miss Warrener, he coaxed himself into loving her more, during all those years of brooding, than ever he did when he had her before his eyes. Be very sure, she made a proper fool of him, to embitter him so for a lifetime--until he found you. Don’t be too sorry for him. He has enjoyed living upon that memory.” “Oh, you are hard and cynical,” said Clare, vexed, because she saw suddenly the whole of that episode, which, in her eyes, had always thrown so picturesque a colour over Calladine’s melancholy--saw it now in a cruel, naked light, Calladine duped first, and then retiring in sulky discomfiture, to build upon a silly, sordid, mismanaged story an erection of wordy romance: “I wish I had not told you; you take every opportunity, to-night, of belittling Mr. Calladine.”