And again, in the baffling vagaries of her brooding thought, she would find herself doubting him--him whom her better self knew to be the very soul of honour. And more than once her resentment at this sore bondage of fate showed itself unworthily in words that cut like arrows. It was all his fault. If he had let Serge come on to the mines she would have found him there. It was Pavlof's stupid interference that had set everything wrong and landed them all in this hateful coil. And Pavlof, if he understood but dimly, trusted much, for he loved much. He suffered acutely because his hands were tied. There was nothing he could do but bear with her always with the utmost gentleness, and that he did. "It is Hope Ivanovna," he would say to himself. "And she is tried beyond bearing." He had given his life for her husband's, and she resented it and regarded him as an interferer. It taxed his equanimity to the utmost at times, but never by word or look did he show sign of what was in him, nor did he ever depart by a hair's-breadth from the straight line he had laid down for himself. He kept strictest guard on voice and look, and tuned them delicately to the necessities of the case, and bore with her patiently like the gallant gentleman he was. But if he never flinched under her flailings, and showed no sign of wound, she knew when her arrows pierced. Then, in due course, she would recognise the wrong she had done him, and the swing of the pendulum would carry her to the other extreme. To salve the wounds she had dealt she would unbend towards him and become sweetness itself. To wipe out the memory of her ungraciousness she would become more than gracious. And then in turn--and it needed a stout heart and a set jaw at times, for her sweetness was harder to be borne than her undeserved bitterness--it seemed to be he who was cold and hard, and held her at a distance. But these were her extremes. Between times, and always, except when these gloomy fits mastered her, she was just her own sweet, high-spirited, clear-souled self, deeply interested in all his doings and in the welfare of the community, and life became sweet to Paul Pavlof. If ever man was tried and tested to his heights and depths, it was Pavlof in this earlier period of their companionship. To live in such strange case with the one woman who was more to him than all the rest of the world--so close to her--one with her to the general eye--bound, by the exigencies of the case, to tender her before others all those little observances of affection in which his heart would have rejoiced beyond words had they only been real--outwardly, all the happiness he had ever dared to hope for--inwardly, the keen sting of the mockery of it all! Yes, he suffered much. "Without sorrow no one liveth in love," says old à Kempis. But at the heart of the sting was that keen, deep joy which is the very soul and core of love.