And on this armour, the weapons of Milbanke's love had been turned aside. There had been no scenes, no harassing disillusionment; but gradually, inevitably his original attitude with regard to her--his shy reticence, his uncertainty, as in the presence of some incomprehensible quality--had returned. He had slowly but surely withdrawn into himself, turning with a pathetic eagerness to the interests that had previously usurped his thoughts. With the nervous sensitiveness that warred continuously with his matter-of-fact precision, he became uncomfortably conscious of occupying a false position, of having made an indisputable--almost a ridiculous--mistake; and he had taken a blind leap towards the quarter in which he believed compensation to lie. While Clodagh, vaguely divining this--vaguely remorseful, of what she scarcely knew--had held her own enthusiasms more rigidly in check, schooling herself into acquiescence with every impersonal suggestion that he chose to make. From this had arisen the pursuit of the antique in whatever corner of Europe--and at whatever season of the year--circumstances might decree. To Clodagh, the pilgrimages had seemed unutterably wearisome and unutterably foolish; but there is a great capacity for silent endurance in the Irish nature. Quick-blooded though it may be, it possesses that strong fatalistic instinct that accepts without question the decree of the gods. The spirit of revolt is not lacking in it; but it requires a given atmosphere--a given sequence of events--to bring it into activity. At two-and-twenty Clodagh was weary of her husband, of herself, of her life. But precisely as her father had fretted out his existence in the quiet monotony of Orristown, she had accepted her fate without thought of question. In the second year, when they had travelled to England with Nance, Milbanke had suggested a visit to Ireland, but this proposal she had declined. The days when every fibre of her being had yearned for her own country were passed; and the idea of return had lost its savour. As she sat now, sipping her coffee and gazing abstractedly down to where the hot sun glinted on the Arno, it seemed to her that her life--the glorious, exuberant state that she had been accustomed to call her life--had drifted incredibly far away; that it lay asleep, if not already dead, in some intangible realm widely beyond her reach. She thought of Nance away at her English school, and unconsciously she envied her. To be fifteen, and to be surrounded by young people! Involuntarily she sighed; and Mick, ever acutely sensitive to her change of mood, turned and pressed his cold nose against her knee. Mechanically she put down her hand and pulled one of his soft ears; then suddenly she raised her head, attracted by an exclamation of impatience in Milbanke's usually placid voice. Looking up, she saw that he had opened a second letter.