The day in the
pervasive constraint that hampered their relations wore slowly away.
Under the circumstances, even the resources of bridge were scarcely to be
essayed. Bayne lounged for hours with a book in a swing on the veranda.
Briscoe, his hands in his pockets, his hat on the back of his head, his
cigar cocked between his teeth--house-bound, he smoked a prodigious
number of them for sheer occupation--strolled aimlessly in and out, now
in the stables, now listening and commenting as Gladys at the piano
played the music of his choice. Lillian had a score of letters to write.
Her mind, however, scarcely followed her pen as she sat in the little
library that opened from the big, cheery hall. Her thoughts were with all
that had betided in the past and what might have been. She canvassed
anew, as often heretofore, her strange infatuation, like a veritable
aberration, so soon she had ceased to love her husband, to make the
signal and significant discovery that he was naught to love. She had
always had a sort of enthusiasm for the truth in the abstract--not so
much as a moral endowment, but a supreme fixity, the one immutable value,
superior to vicissitudes.
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