Looking back now, after three years, she remembered old Tom Lorburn's perturbed face as she left the Willows with him, the day the loss of the books was discovered. She had said to herself then: "This business about the books is going to make him change his will," and, immediately afterward: "Well, it won't make me change my mind about Lewis." For even if her hopes of an inheritance were gone she was not going to offset the disappointment by marrying Lewis Tarrant. She was sure she would make life unbearable to any man she married for such a reason, and Lewis was too good a fellow to be her victim. It was a pity, of course—for Cousin Tom did die within a few months, and did change his will, leaving the Willows to a distant relative who knew no more what to do with it than he had; and the blow was a bad one for Mr. and Mrs. Spear. Lorry being predestined to ruin them, they had always regarded it as Halo's rôle to restore their fortunes; they would never have asked her to sacrifice her happiness to do so, but they told her (always in reference to other couples) that when it came to marriage a community of tastes and interests—well, such as there was between herself and Lewis, say—was the only guarantee of happiness, once the first rapture was over. "I know, but I want the first rapture," Halo would answer them inwardly; and to Lewis she said with a smiling firmness: "If I married you you'd want to murder me in a month."

Yet she had been his wife for nearly three years now, and they had not only spared each other's lives, but arrived at some kind of mutual understanding, so that, had she been suddenly called on to leave her husband's roof and return to the precarious existence at Eaglewood she would have hesitated, and not only on his account. Habit had wound its benumbing web about her, and she was no more the girl she had been than he was the man she had imagined… .

"Happy?" she said one day to Frenside, with her quick smile. "No, I've never been happy; but I'm content. And being content is so jolly that I sometimes think I couldn't have stood being happy… ."

"Ah, it's a destructive experience," Frenside agreed.