He responded affectionately enough; but as the winter twilight deepened in the little room, Phoebe's eyes, fixed upon the fire, resumed their melancholy discontent.

She was less necessary to him even than before; she knew by a thousand small signs that the forces which possessed his mind--perhaps his heart!--were not now much concerned with her.
She tried to control, to school herself.

But the flame within was not to be quenched--was, indeed, perpetually finding fresh fuel.

How quietly he had taken the story of the tramp's attack upon her!--which still, whenever she thought of it, thrilled her own veins with horror.
No doubt he had been over to Ambleside to speak to the police; and he had arranged that the little servant, Daisy, should come to her when he left.

But if he had merely caught her to him with one shuddering cry of love and rage--that would have been worth all his precautions!--would have effaced the nightmare, and filled her heart.
As to his intellectual life, she was now much more conscious of her exclusion from it than she ever had been in their old life together.
For it was a consciousness quickened by jealousy.