With an exultant sense of comfort he went into his library. The women-folk of his household had never before seemed so near to him, so dependent on him, such organic factors of his life. He stood for a long time on his hearth-rug, scowling terribly, with the air of a wild beast standing at the entrance to its lair in defiant defence of the female and whelps within. CHAPTER XI JOHN RISCA, at thirty-four, with a ward of twenty, and with the normal hope of a man's life withered at the root, regarded himself as an elderly man. He looked older than his years. Ragged streaks of gray appeared in his black hair, and the lines deepened on his heavy brow. There are some men who, no matter what their circumstances may be, never take themselves happily. To do so is a gift; and it was denied to John Risca. Two years had passed since his wife's release. During the years of their separation before her imprisonment, she had counted for little in his thoughts save as a gate barring the way to happiness. She had never molested him, never stood in the way of his ordinary life. In her prison she had begun by being a horror haunting his dreams; gradually she had dwindled into a kind of paralyzed force, had faded into a shadow incapable of action. But since her return to the living world he had felt her hatred as an influence, vague, but active, let loose upon the earth. He dreaded contact with her, however indirect, and through whatever agency; but contact was inevitable. Whereas formerly she had been content to live according to the terms of their agreement on separation, now she made demands. One of them, however, he considered reasonable. In Smith Street, the scene of her misdeeds, she led the life of a pariah dog. She was friendless. Her own relatives had cast her off. The tradespeople round about supplied her reluctantly with necessaries and refused to exchange words with her when she entered their shops. Children hooted her in the streets. John, foreseeing unpleasantness, had offered to find her a home in the country. But this, being town-bred, she had declined. Let her change her name, she urged, and seek other London quarters. He agreed. She adopted the name of Rawlings and moved to a flat off the Fulham Road. To the suggestion of a different part of London altogether she turned a deaf ear. She had lived in that neighbourhood all her days and would feel lost elsewhere. The common Londoner has almost the local instinct of a villager. She would also, she said, be near her mother, who still let lodgings in Brompton. “If your mother refuses to see you,” said John, when they were discussing the matter, “I see no reason for your being near her.” She counselled him, in her vernacular, to mind his own business. “So long as I don't come and live next to you, what have you got to do with it?”