“ No other woman had come into his life as more than a momentary pastime till he met Evelyn. The sight of his wife's short, stricken figure roused no pity in him, only disgust. He had had no very high ideal of women in childhood; that he should have linked himself to a woman whose motives were so mean, one who, having no real interest in the cause, could seek to degrade her husband's honour for the mere sake of satisfying personal curiosity, of flaunting her knowledge in the eyes of others, roused his disgust and shame. ”

“ When two people really love each other those things not only endure and strengthen, but take exquisite sanctity as years go by. The plant strengthens. Its blooms are finer. As the years go, its colour and texture are fit to grow in the Garden of God. Something of the Eternal Love has filtered directly through from some crevice of heaven and shone upon them; their scent isn't of this world, but eternity."
"And you think that might apply to Mr. Farquharson and his wife?" said Evelyn. She stood quite silently, looking away from Lady Wereminster.
"Never," said Lady Wereminster; "but men are human. ”

“ Through her opera-glasses she saw the tears of pride on Calvert's cheeks and Creagh's delighted expression—"Wasn't I right this time, you fellows?" she could almost hear him say. There was a tender smile on Hare's face as he turned in Evelyn's direction and nodded, bringing the palms of his hands together in noiseless applause at the same time. And she saw more still. A wonderful light had leapt in Farquharson's eyes as he bowed his acknowledgments; the light which, having once seen, no woman can mistake, as he looked straight at her and through her, as though laying his triumph at her feet. ”

“ She could give him the human happiness which he craved, peace and oblivion.
Peace, when he had left his wife? And what of Evelyn herself? Before her stretched two paths. Which should she take?
There were voices in her ear; the voice of her director, stern, implacable; the voice of conscience, loud and shrill; Cummings' voice, grieved and pitiful.
"Marriage is a sacrament," said one; "how have you observed it?" "You have abandoned yourself to sin; you have renounced your safeguards of salvation, abjuring the help of your creed for the sake of a passing illusion," said another. ”

“ What had Farquharson's country done for him that he should work for it? It had given him a legacy of dishonour, it had torn his heritage from him. Why should he sow in blood, that the wastrel and incompetent should reap the fruit of his toil in ease? Why should he spend himself that England, who reared heroes only to spit upon them, should put him on that pedestal which had so often, of late years, turned to a pillory? And yet other men had braved and achieved so much more than he. ”

“ The entrance to this house would be for Farquharson the threshold of his career; surely he could not pass along the lovely lanes which led to it hedges festooned with wild blossom, unmoved. Rising, always rising, the way was one of pleasant scents and sounds, its foliage brilliant with the stir of butterflies, and spring's caress. Past deep gorges, and ever winding circuitously up the hill, it opened out at length upon the moor. Evelyn wondered if Farquharson, too, would feel its power, to her as magnetic as that of the Karroo of South Africa, which most people call barren and desolate. ”

“ And because by the narrow channel through which one doubt enters a thousand may follow, she found that the silence and solitude she had once loved were now thronged with ghosts, ghostly visions of the love she might have had but would not, and the life she might have lived with him she loved, one in companionship, one in ambition, one in the most dear and sacred intimacy of marriage, one in failure, one in success, one in the love of the children whose feet they would never now hear, whose lips would never now meet their own. ”

“ All about me are signs of decay. I see young people spending twice as much a week on pleasure as their parents would have spent on the necessities of life in a year; I see every principle I was taught in childhood violated and outraged. Private betrayals, political treason, public indifference, contempt of religion, lightness in marriage are everywhere. Signs of the times, Wereminster says. It breaks his heart like mine. I was brought up to rank honour and truth and sincerity as everyday virtues, and marriage a church ceremony so solemn that it made one weep. ”

“ And as for the sacred fount, immortal fire, food of the gods, call it what you will, that undefined quality that leads men on to dare forlorn hopes and brave martyrdom—the House of Commons would not recognize it if it were there. And yet without it, men are impotent. They themselves move and have their being, but cannot produce life in others."
"Isn't your vital element patriotism?" asked Evelyn. "I always think a man should love his country like his wife, with knowledge and tenderness and passion and forbearance. In nine cases out of ten, nations fail just as women do, for trivial causes. ”

“ In his separation from Evelyn, Farquharson had lost the friend, companion, helpmate, and bride of his dreams. Work—to a habitual worker—cannot heal so deep a wound as this; only complete change of circumstance and scene might possibly change a man's thoughts after such a blow. And for him there was no change. Shorn of all joy and pride in his work, he yet toiled ceaselessly at it; returning daily to a home which, worse than being bare and desolate, contained the wrong woman.
There are women who pry into the smallest details of a man's privacy. Farquharson's dressing-room even was not his own. ”

“ Already terror seized her in its grip. She had awakened to find herself calling upon Farquharson with passionate frenzy; shrieking to him to come and help her bear what could not be borne alone; to drive away, if it were but for an instant, the host of shapes that threatened her, the inward foes that tore at every bleeding fibre, and mocked her as they bathed themselves in the blood of her heart. When she was awake, she longed for sleep; when sleep came, she prayed for wakefulness.
That way lay mania; better death. Ah, but death comes so seldom to him who craves it as a boon ”

“ No doubt of her ability to please him crossed her mind; the useless are invariably self-satisfied. She had mapped out a motor tour which was intended to outdo anything that other brides had accomplished; restless, untiring, she swept Farquharson on from place to place, great towns and cities whose very stones breathed glory and mystery, under the shadows of mountains which at night looked cold and full of awe, types of the crushing power that seemed to rule men's destinies, but which were warmed and quickened to life by the first gleam of the morning sun. ”

“ It took her away from ordinary surroundings and left her indifferent even to all Brand said and did—although he naturally spared her nothing. There is an inner chamber to every heart, a place of refuge and concealment of which at times one may mercifully turn the key. Evelyn withdrew there now when he attacked her; safe within its four walls, she listened to his criticism of Farquharson as one listens to the ravings of a madman. He could touch her no longer; he could hurt her no more. That is the comfort of receiving a mortal wound. ”

“ Tragic and broken, she was to him as a living woman, who needed his help and claimed it as her due. And the one way he could really help her was to go.
He had packed a chosen few of his belongings; of money he had none. But he was strong on the bread of hardship. Dan would, of course, be his companion; no one else. Richard had guessed the secret of this life's success. Unhampered by ties of kinship or love, alone, a man may hope to find the key of that secret cupboard in which the world conceals her few prizes. ”

“ Farquharson himself, the prominent factor in the group of figures, alone was in the shadow. Between him and Evelyn, Hare, Beadon and Dora stood; it was not until he was actually within a few feet of her that she saw him clearly. And then it was rather of his mental than of his physical aspect that she received the real impression. Tall and well made, dark and pale, he had presence and distinction, and remarkable composure. Supremely conscious of himself, the knowledge did not disturb him for a moment. Most men depend upon the external view for an effective entry; Farquharson's was attractive. ”

“ She had always known it in her heart; known what it might be to surrender herself utterly, in the way which most human beings cannot realize, bending will and mind and heart in joyous service, one with her husband, as Lady Wereminster had meant when she said that only in the later days of marriage was its summit reached—because to the right man and the right woman custom only deepens the tenderness of first tremulous ties and changes their promise to fulfilment.
Her love and Farquharson's was born of conflict and sacrifice. It is the only love which survives. ”

“ Dora had got her way; the doctor had administered chloroform long before he would have given it in the case of a courageous patient. Sitting alone in the little anteroom, Evelyn watched grey shadows come and go, frightened servants stepping on tiptoe, the doctor and the nurse, even Farquharson, whose ravaged face put him beyond the reach even of her spoken sympathy. In the house it was presently rumoured that the real struggle with death had begun; the piteous struggle of the child to whom Dora had denied any chance of vitality which might have given her one added pain. ”

“ For primitive man may be awakened in even the most hardened diplomatist. And Farquharson was not naturally hard. Love of victory, too, counts—the spirit which makes a man want to carry off the woman he loves in face of danger, and put her before him on his horse and look back laughing with bullets whizzing about them, and a precipice ahead, for sheer love of devilry and adventure and desire to possess the thing he wants. ”

“ Yes, we say those things to others, but they don't always convince us. There are times when horrible spiritual dryness grips you, and you grope for days and weeks in absolute darkness, knowing that you yourself have raised the veil between you and the light."
"Sacrifice and death—somebody said those were the only terms on which the God of life has made life to exist," said Evelyn softly. "The French talk of the soul's secret garden as though it were a place of promise and perfume. I always think one's secret garden is Gethsemane. ”

“ Farquharson had saved him from going to the grave a disappointed man. For Calvert had loved Cummings like a son, and the lad's change of front had dealt his uncle the sharpest blow of his life. The Roman Catholic priesthood was, in Calvert's view, a network of intrigue and deception, the betrayal of a man's heritage of freedom; he looked upon Cummings as an enemy of the State.
Calvert's interest had been purely impersonal at first; courage is after all instinctive, and may spring as easily from love of adventure as from nobler motives. "The crowded hour of life" is no real test of character. ”

“ And as Farquharson looked another picture rose suddenly before him, a vision of his childhood. The oval face, the dusky hair that waved back from the forehead, the turn of the rounded throat, the shape of the small head, all were familiar. He recognized them. They were his own—he had loved them long ago. He had stood before them night after night in the picture-gallery at Glune.
"A woman to dream of and to work beside." As Kilmaurs had written about Margaret Cunningham, in a lyric the ink of which had faded many years before, so Richard Farquharson felt now for the woman of his dreams. ”

“ The most persevering Bohemian or antiquarian, drawn to the desolate spot by love of adventure or tradition, was eventually pulled up short at sight of the empty lodge, the impenetrable castle gates, high and with narrow grilles, which shut in the vast wilderness of tangled growth and ruin.
Grief and sorrow had concentrated about Glune, until, for Scotsmen, it had become a second Escorial. Inanimate things are as tragic in their way as human beings. A man or woman, however crushed and broken, has moments of quickened vitality in which hope springs, even if mockingly. ”

“ Yet the call of one's country is strong. Now, at this moment, when he, the strong man, wavered between allegiance to her service and denial of her claims, weighing duty in the scale with happiness, her voice rose with the calm insistence which drives a man to do the thing he would not—to achieve what, humanly speaking, we should call impossible. Peace and ease might have been Farquharson's in Taorna—life with the woman he loved. He knew his power; he underrated Evelyn's. ”

“ Douglas had commented, and Richard, bored at the delay, overcome by the gloom and seclusion of the gallery, and long array of still figures in unaccustomed clothes; remembered butting at him with his head until his brother cried out for mercy and moved on.
The portraits—the knights in armour who guarded the entrance to the rooms so jealously, awed him still, but not as of old. They were his friends now, like the squirrels, and passionate love and pride thrilled him each time he entered the gallery. The deeds they had done, the records they had left, few even in Scotland could match. ”

“ Love in itself, for instance, glows with so white a flame that its reflection lights the face of any woman who has given herself for love alone. Such a one hangs hourly upon the cross of wounded honour, crowding more sacrifices for her lover into a day than most of us can compass in a lifetime. But women who lie for the sake of lying, who secure confidences by base means to sell or betray them at the first prick of jealousy, and men who run up gambling debts and leave their womenkind to pay them, are on a different level. ”

“ Had I been able to atone in the smallest degree for your shame and betrayal, you know that I would have given myself gladly, without a moment's hesitation. But your career is opening out again before you. You are not mine really, you see; you never were mine in the biggest sense. Men like you are too big to be bound down by a woman's love; you will reach your goal the quicker because you haven't me beside you. Everything is settled; my husband's escape and my own. It will tell in his favour if I too seem involved in the inevitable scandal. ”

“ Nature—cowardice—physical frailty, even. They were so mighty an array, these almost visible temptations which struck at the very root of her being, which surrounded her and weighed her down with a solid panoply of strength. And to meet them she had but her piteous array of threadbare honour and tottering faith.
For Farquharson it was different. Those who have fame cannot reasonably expect love; life is as best a compromise. Farquharson's career was wide and high. The fate of nations lay in his hand; nations, like individuals, move mechanically to a set tune. ”

“ There's nothing so impossible to grip as an audience that has wrapped itself in the cloak of indifference. I suppose at heart there isn't a man in the House but covets Farquharson's position; not a man but thinks he could fill it as adequately were he called upon to do so. And jealousy, as you know, has been at the root of every betrayal, of every libel, since the world began. ”

“ Looking at life now with that sense of curious detachment which comes to some of us when we stand on the brink of a moral precipice, it seemed to her that God had given His Great Gift of Love for this, and this alone—to show by the mutability of earthly things—even by the very highest passion which human love can attain—the necessity of leaving all for eternity, of tearing every human chord and tie to shreds, that from the broken strands we might weave a tiny ladder upon which wearily to climb into God's Kingdom. ”

“ You're made for me, and I for you. The world shan't dare to throw a stone at you—I'll see to that. We'll win through everything, hands down. Love's the fulfilling of the law. Sinning against it is the one unpardonable crime. It's when a man does that, that he deserves the hell to which he's probably already sent the woman who loves him."
"Wait," said Evelyn at last. "Let me think—I must think." She put out her hand to warn him back. She was face to face with naked facts; it had never been Farquharson's way to lie to those he trusted; he was not lying now. ”