At the bottom
of his heart Barode Barouche did not want marital freedom. He had loved
the mad woman. He remembered her in the glory of her youth, in the
splendour of her beauty. The insane asylum did not destroy his memory.
Mrs. Grier remembered too, but in a different way. Her relations with him
had been one swift, absorbing fever--a mad dream, a moment of rash
impulse, a yielding to the natural feeling which her own husband had
aroused: the husband who now neglected her while Barode Barouche treated
her so well, until a day when under his beguilement a stormy impulse
gave--Carnac. Then the end came, instant and final; she bolted, barred
and locked the door against Barode and he had made little effort to open
it. So they had parted, and had never clasped hands or kissed again. To
him she was a sin of which he never repented. He had watched the growth
and development of Carnac with a sharp sympathy. He was not a good man;
but in him were seeds of goodness. To her he was the lash searing her
flesh, day in day out, year in year out, which kept her sacred to her
home. For her children's sake she did not tell her husband, and she had
emptied out her heart over Carnac with overwhelming fondness.
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