The relations between husband and wife, he reminded himself, must, at any rate, have been strained during the last few months, or Cranston would never have been able to keep his secret.

In his gloomy passage through this land of ill omens, however, he shivered a little as he thought of the other possibility--tortured himself with imagining what might happen during her revulsion of feeling, if Philippa discovered the truth.

A sense of something greater than he had yet known in life seemed to lift him into some lofty state of aloofness, from which he could look down and despise himself, the poor, tired plodder wearing the heavy chains of duty.

There was a life so much more wonderful, just the other side of the clouds, a very short distance away, a life of alluring and passionate happiness.

Should he ever find the courage, he wondered, to escape from the treadmill and go in search of it?
Duty, for the last two years, had taken him by the hand and led him along a pathway of shame.
He had never been a hypocrite about the war.