Chapter 16

The turnings of life seldom show a sign-post; or rather, though the
sign is always there, it is usually placed some distance back, like the
notices that give warning of a bad hill or a level railway-crossing.

Ralph Marvell, pondering upon this, reflected that for him the sign had
been set, more than three years earlier, in an Italian ilex-grove. That
day his life had brimmed over--so he had put it at the time. He saw now
that it had brimmed over indeed: brimmed to the extent of leaving the
cup empty, or at least of uncovering the dregs beneath the nectar. He
knew now that he should never hereafter look at his wife's hand without
remembering something he had read in it that day. Its surface-language
had been sweet enough, but under the rosy lines he had seen the warning
letters.

Since then he had been walking with a ghost: the miserable ghost of his
illusion. Only he had somehow vivified, coloured, substantiated it, by
the force of his own great need--as a man might breathe a semblance of
life into a dear drowned body that he cannot give up for dead. All this
came to him with aching distinctness the morning after his talk with his
wife on the stairs. He had accused himself, in midnight retrospect, of
having failed to press home his conclusion because he dared not face
the truth. But he knew this was not the case. It was not the truth he
feared, it was another lie. If he had foreseen a chance of her saying:
"Yes, I was with Peter Van Degen, and for the reason you think," he
would have put it to the touch, stood up to the blow like a man; but he
knew she would never say that. She would go on eluding and doubling,
watching him as he watched her; and at that game she was sure to beat
him in the end.

On their way home from the Elling dinner this certainty had become so
insufferable that it nearly escaped him in the cry: "You needn't watch
me--I shall never again watch you!" But he had held his peace, knowing
she would not understand. How little, indeed, she ever understood,
had been made clear to him when, the same night, he had followed her
upstairs through the sleeping house. She had gone on ahead while he
stayed below to lock doors and put out lights, and he had supposed her
to be already in her room when he reached the upper landing; but she
stood there waiting in the spot where he had waited for her a few hours
earlier. She had shone her vividest at dinner, with revolving brilliancy
that collective approval always struck from her; and the glow of it
still hung on her as she paused there in the dimness, her shining cloak
dropped from her white shoulders.

"Ralphie--" she began, a soft hand on his arm. He stopped, and she
pulled him about so that their faces were