And any close observer who knew him would have seen that there was a change in his whole expression, since the same time the last week.
The impossible disappointment of everything! What kind of a nature could his wife have, to be so absolutely mute and unresponsive as she had been?
He felt glad he had not given her the chance to snub him again.
These last days he had been able to keep to his determination, and at all events did not feel himself humiliated.

How long would it be before he should cease to care for her?
He hoped to God--soon, because the strain of crushing his passionate desires was one which no man could stand long.
The little, mutinous face, with its alluring, velvet, white skin, her slightly full lips, all curved and red, and tempting, and anything but cold in shape, and the extraordinary magnetic attraction of her whole personality, made her a most dangerous thing; and then his thoughts turned to the vision of her hair undone that he had had on that first evening at Dover.

He had said once to Francis Markrute, he remembered, that these great passions were "storybook stuff." Good God! Well, in those days he had not known.
He thought, as he returned from his honeymoon this day, that he could not be more frightfully unhappy, but he was really only beginning the anguish of the churning of his soul--if he had known.
And Zara sat in her armchair, and pretended to read; but when he glanced at her he saw that it was a farce and that her expressive eyes were again quite blank.
And finally, after the uncomfortable hours, they arrived at Calais and went to the boat.
Here Zara seemed to grow anxious again and on the alert, and, stepping forward, asked Higgins to inquire if there was a telegram for her, addressed to the ship.

But there was not, and she subsided once more quietly and sat in their cabin.
Tristram did not even attempt to play the part of the returning bridegroom beyond the ordinary seeing to her comfort about which he had never failed; he left her immediately and remained for all the voyage on deck.
And when they reached Dover Zara's expectancy showed again, but it was not until they were just leaving the station that a telegram was thrust through the window and he took it from the boy, while he could not help noticing the foreign form of address.

And a certainty grew in his brain that it was "that same cursed man!" He watched her face as she read it, and noticed the look of relief as, quite unconscious of his presence, his bride absently spread the paper out.