Years ago she had told Ian Stafford of one of the dreams of a past life--that she was a slave in Athens who saved her people by singing to the Tyrant; and Ian had made her sing to him, in a voice quite in keeping with her personality, delicate and fine and wonderfully high in its range, bird-like in its quality, with trills like a lark--a little meretricious but captivating.

He had also written for her two verses which were as sharp and clear in her mind as the letter he wrote when she had thrown him over so dishonourably: "Your voice I knew, its cadences and trill; It stilled the tumult and the overthrow When Athens trembled to the people's will; I knew it--'twas a thousand years ago.
"I see the fountains, and the gardens where You sang the fury from the Satrap's brow; I feel the quiver of the raptured air I heard you in the Athenian grove--I hear you now." As the words flashed into her mind now she looked at her husband steadfastly.

Were there, then, some unexplored regions in his nature, where things dwelt, of which she had no glimmering of knowledge?
Did he understand more of women than she thought?
Could she then really talk to him of a thousand things of the mind which she had ever ruled out of any commerce between them, one half of her being never opened up to his sight?
Not that he was deficient in intellect, but, to her thought, his was a purely objective mind; or was it objective because it had not been trained or developed subjectively?
Had she ever really tried to find a region in his big nature where the fine allusiveness and subjectivity of the human mind could have free life and untrammelled exercise, could gambol in green fields of imagination and adventure upon strange seas of discovery?
A shiver of pain, of remorse, went through her frame now, as he held her at arm's length and looked at her....

Had she started right?
Had she ever given their natures a chance to discover each other?
Warmth and passion and youth and excitement and variety--oh, infinite variety there had been!--but had the start been a fair one, had she, with a whole mind and a full soul of desire, gone to him first and last?
What had been the governing influence in their marriage where she was concerned?
Three years of constant motion, and never an hour's peace; three years of agitated waters, and never in all that time three days alone together.

What was there to show for the three years?
That for which he had longed with a great longing had been denied him; for he had come of a large family, and had the simple primitive mind and heart.