Each week of living with her deepened his conviction that the winning of the entire woman would be a matter of time and trouble; of acquiring knowledge in which he was still sadly deficient. And how infinitely she was worth it all! He reminded himself that the first year of marriage was proverbially difficult; that two pronounced individualities could not be expected to fuse without a certain degree of turmoil; and having lighted his pipe, he flung himself into a chair, and closed his eyes. For his trouble of mind had a physical basis of which his wife knew nothing. His wound, though only keeping him on the sick-list a week, had given him a good deal of pain, intermittent fever, and broken nights, which he had made light of that Quita might feel free to devote herself to Richardson, whose first bout of fever had been severe. But when pain and heated blood had subsided, the broken nights remained. A crushed habit--let it be never so sternly trodden under--retains its vitality for an amazing length of time. Lenox fought the threatened return of insomnia with every legitimate weapon; spent the greater part of each night in his study, writing doggedly, or pacing the long room with mechanical persistence,--to no purpose. Then, with a stunned incredulity, he realised what was happening. Stealthily, insistently, the old craving was reasserting its dominion over him. He had been prepared for the possibility of its recrudescence once or twice in the event of illness or mental strain, before he could count it conquered for good. But that it should have come so soon, and upon so slight a provocation, knocked all the heart out of him; blackened for the time being his whole outlook on life. In ordinary circumstances, he would have found it an unspeakable relief to share the trouble with his wife; to give her the chance she had once so desired of helping him to fight against it. But now they were rarely alone together for long; and her lightly detached attitude tended to establish rather than dispel his native instinct of reserve. Moreover, she was so happily absorbed in ministering to his friend, that he shrank from shadowing her bright nature with the cloud that darkened his own;--a mistake arising from his rudimentary knowledge of women. For an appeal to her deeper sympathies might have wakened her undeveloped mother instinct; and by drawing them into closer union might have averted much. But in the last event, it is 'character that makes circumstance, and character is inexorable.'