, like any girl of eighteen, to throw herself on his neck and reproach him for their unhappiness, his friends—she knew not what! He all the time was intimately conscious of her presence, of her pale beauty, which now at twenty-nine, in spite of its severity, had a subtler finish and attraction than ever, of the restless little movements so unlike herself, which she made from time to time. But neither spoke except upon indifferent things. Once more the difficult conditions of their lives seemed too obvious, too oppressive. Both were ultimately conquered by the same sore impulse to let speech alone.

CHAPTER XLII

And after this little scene, through the busy exciting weeks of the season which followed, Robert, taxed to the utmost on all sides, yielded to the impulse of silence more and more.

Society was another difficulty between them, Robert delighted in it so far as his East End life allowed him to have it. No one was ever more ready to take other men and women at their own valuation than he. Nothing was so easy to him as to believe in other people's goodness, or cleverness, or superhuman achievement. On the other hand, London is kind to such men as Robert Elsmere. His talk, his writing, were becoming known and relished; and even the most rigid of the old school found it difficult to be angry with him. His knowledge of the poor and of social questions attracted the men of actions; his growing historical reputation drew the attention of the men of thought. Most people wished to know him and to talk to him,[Pg 512] and Catherine, smiled upon for his sake, and assumed to be his chief disciple, felt herself more and more bewildered and antagonistic as the season rushed on.

For what pleasure could she get out of these dinners and these evenings, which supplied Robert with so much intellectual stimulus? With her all the moral nerves were jarring and out of tune. At any time Richard Leyburn's daughter would have found it hard to tolerate a society where everything is an open question and all confessions of faith are more or less bad taste. But now, when there was no refuge to fall back upon in Robert's arms, no certainty of his sympathy—nay, a certainty that, however tender and pitiful he might be, he would still think her wrong and mistaken! She went here and there obediently because he wished; but her youth seemed to be ebbing, the old Murewell gaiety entirely left her, and people in general wondered why Elsmere should have married a wife older than himself, and