Success had spoiled him. He applied his gifts in politics, daringly
unscrupulous, superficially persuasive, intellectually insinuating, to
his wife; and she, who had been captured once by all these things, was
not to be captured again. She knew what alone could capture her; and, as
she sat and watched the singers on the stage now, the divine notes of
that searching melody still lingering in her heart, there came a sudden
wonder whether Eglington's heart could not be wakened. She knew that it
never had been, that he had never known love, the transfiguring and
reclaiming passion. No, no, surely it could not be too late--her marriage
with him had only come too soon! He had ridden over her without mercy; he
had robbed her of her rightful share of the beautiful and the good; he
had never loved her; but if love came to him, if he could but once
realise how much there was of what he had missed! If he did not save
himself--and her--what would be the end? She felt the cords drawing her
elsewhere; the lure of a voice she had heard in an Egyptian garden was in
her ears.
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