Kingcote was walking about the streets. He avoided home nowadays as much as possible; his madness seemed harder to bear in his own room, or with Mary watching him; it was always best to walk himself into fatigue, that there might be a chance of sleep in the night. Why had he not obeyed her hint, and left before visitors could arrive? And there again was the sting; she _wished_ him to leave. Did she expect this cousin of hers, this prosperous, well-fed, easy-mannered gentleman? That mattered little; the one certainty was that her love grew less and less. She had not even the outward affectionateness which had once marked her when she spoke with him alone. Knowing perfectly the power of help and soothing that lay in her lightest loving word, she would not trouble to find one, not one. She was gay in the face of his misery. Love would be affected by subtle sympathies; yet she slept peacefully through those nights when he wrestled with anguish; when he called upon her, she was deaf to the voice she should have heard. So many other voices claimed her ear; those that murmured graceful things in bright drawing-rooms, those that flattered insidiously when she was enjoying her triumphs. It had been a mistake; to her an occasion, perhaps, for regrets and annoyances, to him a source of unutterable woe. Even if she really loved him at first, how could she continue to, now that every day brought something to lower him in her estimation? The worst of his suffering was in the thought that he himself was his own ruin. Could he from the first have borne himself like a man, have been affectionate without excess, have taken some firm, direct course in his difficulties, above all have seemed to be independent of her, then he might have held her his own. But that was requiring of him to be another than he was. Out of weakness strength could not come. His passion was that of a woman. Could he even now put on a consistent show of independence, it might not be too late. Why had he not taken her at her word when she offered to return to Knights well? Was it too late? Too late; for in love that which is undone never can be made good. He was not worthy of her love; the consciousness was burnt in upon his brain. Had she met him now for the first time, and seen him as now he was, would she have loved him? Never; to think it was to rob her of woman’s excellence. He had no one but himself to blame. He must bear it; go lower in her sight day after day, see her impatience grow, feel friendship wholly supplanting love, and fatigued endurance take the place of friendship. It was his fate; he was himself, and could not become another.... Ah, he had indeed drunk too deeply of that magic water of the Knights Well, the spring at her gates! One draught, and it would have sent him on his way refreshed. But the water was so insidiously sweet....