At the very moment when she least could love, she was left no resource but love; at the moment when she would have turned her eyes most away from him and most towards his deeds, the deeds were taken away and he only was left; at the time when her hot anger against him drove her into a cry for release, she received no promise of release, or a promise deferred beyond an indefinitely stretching period of a worse imprisonment. For she clung to no such hope as that which made Dick Benyon dream of a resurrection of activity and of power, and had nothing to look for save years of a life both to herself and to him miserable. It might be sin to wish him dead; but was it sin to wish him either alive or dead, either in vigour or at rest? Sin or no sin, that was the desire in her heart, and it would not be stifled however much she accused its inhumanity or recognised the want of love in it. Was the fault all hers? With her lips still burning from the lie that she had told for him, she could not answer 'yes.' Still and silent Quisante lay on his bed. His head was quite clear now and his eyes grew brighter. He watched Lady Mildmay as she ministered to him, and he watched his wife with his old quick furtive glances, so keen to mark every shade of her manner towards him. She had never really deceived him as to her thoughts of him; she did not deceive him now. He knew that her sympathies were estranged, more estranged than they had ever been before. So far as the reason lay in the incident of Ashwood, it was hidden from him; he knew nothing of the last great shame that he had put on her. But long before this he had recognised where his power over her lay, by what means he had gained and by what he kept it; he had been well aware that if she were still to be under his sway, the conquest must be held by his achievements; he himself was as nothing beside them. Now, as he lay, he was thinking what would happen. He also had heard the doctor's story or enough of it to enable him to guess the purport of their sentence on him; he was to live as an invalid, to abandon all his ambitions, to throw away all that made people admire him or made him something in the world's eyes and something great in hers. On these terms and on these only life was offered to him now; if he refused, if he defied nature, then he must go on with the sword ever hanging over him, in the knowledge that it soon must fall. He told himself that, yet was but half-convinced. Need it fall? With the first spurt of renewed strength he raised that question and argued it, till he seemed able to say 'It may fall,' rather than 'It must.'