No, there had never been such a chance; and he thanked God that he had learned before it was too late that for him there could be no earthly paradise, no fireside _a deux_, no home, no hope of it.
As long as Alixe lived his spiritual responsibility must endure.

And they had just told him that she might easily outlive them all.
He turned heavily in his chair and stared at the fire.

Perhaps he saw infernal visions in the flames; perhaps the blaze meant nothing more to him than an example of chemical reaction, for his face was set and colourless and vacant, and his hands lay loosely along the padded arms of his easy-chair.
The hardest lesson he had to learn in these days was to avoid thinking.
Or, if he must surrender to the throbbing, unbidden memories which came crowding in hordes to carry him by the suddenness of their assault, that he learn to curb and subdue and direct them in pity toward that hopeless, helpless, stricken creature who was so utterly dependent upon him in her dreadful isolation.
And he could not so direct them.
Loyal in act and deed, his thoughts betrayed him.

Memories, insurgent, turned on him to stab him; and he shrank from them, cowering among his pillows at midnight.

But memory is merciless, and what has been is without pity; and so remembrance rose at midnight from its cerements, like a spectre, floating before his covered eyes, wearing the shape of youth and love, crowned with the splendour of _her_ hair, looking at him out of those clear, sweet eyes whose gaze was purity and truth eternal.
And truth is truth, though he might lie with hands clinched across his brow to shut out the wraith of it that haunted him; though he might set his course by the faith that was in him, and put away the hope of the world--whose hope is love--the truth was there, staring, staring at him out of Eileen Erroll's dark-blue eyes.
* * * * * He had seen her seldom that winter.