Rawn, absent in New York, imagined his wife engaged continuously in the struggle of persuading Charles Halsey to see the light of reason, although he did not know Halsey was living under the same roof with her. As a matter of fact, Halsey and she met but rarely. Virginia breakfasted for the most part in her own rooms, and found, or pretended to find, something to occupy her for the most part of the day. Not once did she ask his attendance, not once did she speak with him, when by chance she saw him, upon any but casual or conventional matters. She seemed always to evade him; and because she did this, he, rebelling, sought her out all the more, even while continually resolving to take his departure, and never again to see this place, or her, again. He wondered at her reticence, her avoidance of him. He wondered why she was so pale. He loitered about, unhappily, in this or that common meeting ground of the great mansion house, waiting to hear the rustle of a gown upon the stair, the sound of a light foot on a floor, the touch of a white hand, the sound of a voice--all things belonging, not to his wife, but to his young stepmother by law. V Yes. Without his wish, in spite of her wish, these had become things desired, the only things desirable any more in his distracted life. He lived under the same roof with two women, saw either rarely, and rarely thought of but one--the wrong one. To atone, Halsey lavished all his time and care on his little hunchback daughter, and had her with him as much as the nurse and doctor would allow. The child, undersized, pale, deformed, silent and wistful, and pathetic always, now was listless and weak, obviously very seriously ill. It wrung her father's heart to see her. But Charles Halsey wanted it wrung. He wanted to do bitterest penance for what he now knew was his secret sin. So the ways of inordinate power, the consequences, for this one or that one, which follow on inordinate greed, worked themselves on out toward their sure and logical ending, the mill of fate grinding those primarily, secondarily, even incidentally guilty. At this time, had Virginia Rawn asked of him to recant, to relent, to change, there is likelihood he would have done so. John Rawn, cuckold, was right in his despicable reasoning. There are many prices which purchase principles. The weakness which had prompted Halsey to remain at Graystone Hall on such a tenure--which held him there now, waiting for a voice, listening for a footfall--was the ancient weakness of youth before youth, of strength before beauty, of the empty heart before one offering love, of the mind finding perfect echo in another mind. With all his starved heart, all his repressed soul, all his mutinous body, Charles Halsey loved Virginia Rawn. CHAPTER VIII THEY WHO WATER WITH TEARS I