He could not give her up even had he wished it, for, like a belief, she had passed from his brain into the fibre of his being.

She had become a habit to him, and not love, but the inability to change, to cease thinking what he had always thought, to break a fixed manner of life, would keep him faithful to her in his heart.
"I'm sorry--oh, I'm sorry," she murmured, longing to have it over and to return to Jane and the children.

It occurred to her almost resentfully that love was not always an unmixed delight.
"Is there any one else, Gabriella ?" he asked with a sudden choking sound in his voice.

"I have sometimes thought--in the last four or five months--that there might be--that you had changed--that--" He stopped abruptly, and she answered him with a beautiful frankness which would have horrified the imperishable, if desiccated, coquetry of her mother.
"There is some one else and there isn't," she replied simply.

"I mean I think of some one else very often--of some one who isn't in my life at all--from whom I never hear--" "Is it George Fowler ?" She bowed her head, and, though she did not blush, her eyes grew radiant.
"And you have known him less than a year ?" Again she bowed her head without speaking.