For
true happiness, true content and goodness can not be given. They must
be self-won, or they are no more than hothouse plants which shrivel
together in the cold blast of an east wind. Lois had sacrificed herself
to bring true happiness and content and goodness into Travers' life,
and had failed. She had failed all the more signally because she had
never loved him. She had loved Stafford--extraordinary and terrible as
it seemed to her, she still loved him. She could not root him out of her
life, and though his image was overshadowed by a greater and more noble
figure he retained his place.
The glance they had exchanged had pierced down to the very center of
her being, and if it had revealed nothing to her it had also revealed
everything. For she knew now that the strange bond which had linked
them together from the beginning united them still. Some reckless and
unscrupulous hand had sundered them outwardly, and her instinct,
guided by a hundred significant incidents, told her whose hand it
had been. She fled to her little gloomy sitting-room, with its
worn-out, tasteless furniture and drab walls, and fought her sorrow
and despair single-handed and in her own way. She had a man's dislike
for tears--though, being a woman, they came all too easily to her--and
she fought against them now with all the strength at her command, with
all the pluck which in happier days had made her so splendid a partner
in a "losing game.
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