Perhaps, he sometimes thought, it was that he was not altogether free from anxiety concerning her. To her this separation had not appeared to be so miserable a thing as it was to him. She had suggested it, had argued for it, had not admitted any of the drawbacks which he had seen in it, and had absolutely refused to be shaken from her determination. On the other hand, she might have felt it as deeply and as keenly as he had done, while for his sake and to make it bearable for him, she had just put on a brave face, smiling when tears would easily have come. If this were so, how brave she had been and how cowardly he.
This thought had come to him one morning when he had found work difficult, and was about to leave it for the day. It invigorated him; he would not be outdone by her, or he would ever have to reproach himself for not having faithfully abided by his word to work with all his might. Work! Yes, not for himself, but for her. If that did not drive him on, if that failed to inspire him, he was weak indeed.
Again and again, however, fears and doubts assailed him. He would wake suddenly in the night, aroused by no apparent cause, and would start thinking about her, wondering if she were well and happy. At first he had written to her almost daily, until she had forbidden him to do so any longer, urging that it was nearly, if not quite as harmful for him to do this as to have her chattering and laughing by his side. Her letters to him had grown more and more infrequent, shorter and shorter; mere little messages now, that stimulated a hunger they did not do anything to satisfy.
A curious change had come over his imaginings. In the early days after her going away he had found no difficulty in conjuring up her face before his mind’s eye. Gradually the image had grown vaguer and more vague until at last, if he would think of her as she was, he had to look at “The Rebel.” What memories the picture called back to him! The meeting with her that foggy afternoon in Bond Street; years ago it seemed, but in reality only a few brief months; the afternoon he had first gone down to visit her at Kennington; the thought that he had then that she was deliciously beautiful, and that he would love to have her for his playmate; the birth of a better feeling, the growth of his deep love for her; the finding her alone and lonely in that stuffy Bloomsbury hotel; the long days and nights of delight that they had passed together since. Again and again he reproached himself for little attentions that he had failed to pay her, and for the few bitter words that he had spoken to her once in a moment of irritation. He was so utterly unworthy of her that in good truth he should have done for her all the little that was in his power. He had kept her apart from his friends selfishly, with the result that she must be very lonely now. He had written to Mortimer asking him to do anything he could to relieve the monotony of her existence. What a dear woman she was, he thought over and over again, to put up with all the troubles and worries he had brought upon her—all for love of him.