Because it was not in his power to hold her. Even if he had followed a certain wild, hateful impulse which bade him keep her, even by means of locked doors and imprisonment, he would have held but the husk of her. The lonely spirit which animated her, which was the thing he loved, and met for the first time, would not have been there in her prison, but away with the child she loved. His success would have been sheer failure. Whereas now, deep in his heart, not to be completely annihilated, lurked the faint hope that his present failure might possibly, by some scarcely conceivable good fortune, turn into success. The miles flew past unnoticed, while he sat rapt within himself. As the car came to a standstill before the dark porch of Omberleigh, he was reflecting upon the strangeness of the fact that he had once thought Virginia's resemblance to her mother so striking. Already she had almost ceased to remind him of his former bitterness. A wholly new image of her had grown up in his heart. Before it for the last weeks he had been burning incense. He had placed it in a sacred niche upon a pedestal. To-night he had taken it out. He wanted to hold it in his arms, to make it his. What if it failed to pass the almost superhuman test which he had devised for it? CHAPTER XIX ABSENCE "_My whole life is so strange: as strange It is, my husband, whom I have not wronged, Should hate and harm me._"--The Ring and the Book. As once before, when the doctor visited her, Joey Ferris was busy in the garden, cutting off dead blooms. Her little boys busily waited on her, each with his small barrow, in which they collected the faded flowers which she tossed upon the path, and ran off with them down the long walks to the rubbish heap, puffing and blowing to announce the fact of their being goods trains or expresses, or light engines, as the fancy took them. It was nearly lunch time, and Ferris was going to bring home a man who had showed signs of interest in the lead-mine scheme. As the stable clock chimed a quarter to one, the mistress of Perley Hatch straightened her back, took off her gardening gloves, rubbed her nose reflectively, and wondered whether she "ought to change." As the doubt crossed her mind, she looked up to see some one approaching across the grass, and with a vast surprise recognised Gaunt of Omberleigh. "Why," cried she very heartily, advancing to meet him with hand outstretched, "I _am_ glad to see you! Didn't think you knew your way to this house! What's the news this morning? Better, I hope?" "It seems to be astonishingly good. The change of treatment and my wife's presence, taken together, have worked a miracle. The child, who was dangerously ill, is making marked progress every day." "Oh, well, that is some consolation for you, isn't it?" said Joey, her eyes full of sympathy, and her voice almost tender. "I think you are just the most unselfish man I have ever heard of--letting Virgie go off like that!"