And with Jane's going something good and noble in Lingard went too, and as he walked into the darkness he lashed himself into a sea of deep injury and pain. His heart filled with anger rather than with shame when he evoked the look almost of aversion, of protesting anguish, which had come into her face while his lips had sought and found unresponsive her sweet, tremulous mouth. He had been longing, craving, for that which he had now only the right to demand from her, and she had cruelly repulsed him. How amazing that a fortnight--or was it three weeks?--could have so altered a woman! Even now the memory of those days they had spent together immediately on his return home was dear and sacred to him. Could he have been mistaken,--such was the question he asked himself to-night,--in his belief that Jane Oglander had been exquisitely sensitive, responsive as are few human beings to every high demand of love? Was it that his unspoken, unconfessed treachery had killed, obliterated in her the power of response? Nay, it was far more likely that he had made a mistake,--that the woman he loved was cold, as many tender women are cold, temperamentally incapable of that fusion of soul and body which is the essence of love between a man and a woman. Had he not discovered this lack in Jane through his contact with a very different nature--with one who was full of quick, warm-blooded, generous impulses? Athena Maule might do foolish things,--she had admitted to him that more than once she had been tempted to do wild, reckless things,--but it was only her heart that would lead her astray. The man in Lingard, knowing as he thought the hidden truth which underlay her story, felt full of burning sympathy. As he at last walked back to the house, it was pleasant to him to feel that he would be able to forget the painful, the humiliating hour he had gone through with the woman who was to be his wife, in the company of Athena Maule. * * * * * Athena was in her boudoir. She had been there alone for two hours, and they had been hours filled with impatient revolt and anxiety. After Mrs. Pache had gone Athena had tried to find first Jane, and then Lingard. Then Dick Wantele, meeting her, had casually observed that the two others had gone out for a long walk. Jane and Lingard out together beyond her ken and pursuit? The knowledge stabbed her. Athena was convinced, aye quite honestly convinced, that these two, her friends both of them, were ill-suited the one to the other. She felt the breach between herself and Jane, and it hurt her the more because she had done nothing--nothing to deserve that Jane should avoid her as she sometimes felt sure Jane was doing. It was not her fault if General Lingard was gradually coming to see the terrible mistake he had made. But to-night, while waiting, too excited, too impatient to do anything but sit and stare into the fire, she told herself that she was also disappointed in Lingard.