Perhaps it was this, combined with the
virilities, not to be questioned, of his aspect, the signs of hard
physical endurance in the face burned by desert suns, and the
suggestions of a frame too lean and gaunt for drawing-rooms, that gave
him his spell and preserved it.
Mary's conversation with him consisted at first of much cool fencing on
her part, which gradually slipped back, as he intended it should, into
some of the tones of intimacy. Each meanwhile was conscious of a secret
range of thoughts--hers concerned with the effort and struggle, the
bitter disappointments and disillusions of the past six weeks; and his
with the schemes he had cherished in the East and on the way home, of
marrying Mary Lyster, or more correctly, Mary Lyster's money, and so
resigning himself to the inevitable boredoms of an English existence.
For her the mental horizon was full of Kitty--Kitty insolent,
Kitty triumphant. For him, too, Kitty made the background of
thought--environed, however, with clouds of indecision and resistance
that would have raised happiness in Mary could she have divined them.
For he was now not easy to capture.
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