That she could do a thing at once so violent and so final, was so wholly out of keeping with all his memories of her, that he could only think of the woman who had come in his absence to the Bernard Street studio, and defaced the sketch of Madame de Pastourelles, as in some sort a stranger--one whom, were she to step back into his life, he would have had to learn afresh.

Sometimes, when anything reminded him of her suddenly--as, for instance, the vision in a shop-window of the very popular mezzotint which had been made from the 'Genius Loci' the year after its success in the Academy--the pang from which he suffered would seem to show that he still loved her, as indeed he had always loved her, through all the careless selfishness of his behaviour.

But, again, there were many months when she dropped altogether--or seemed to drop--out of his mind and memory, when he was entirely absorbed in the only interests she had left him--his art, his quarrels, and his relation to Eugenie de Pastourelles.
There was a time, indeed--some two or three years after the catastrophe--when he passed through a stage of mental and moral tumult, natural to a man of strong passions and physique.

Even in their first married life, Phoebe had been sometimes jealous, and with reason.

It was her memory of these occasions that had predisposed her to the mad suspicion which wrecked her.