A CHANCE ENCOUNTER There was now an open breach between the Steels, but no third person would have discerned any difference in their relations.

It was a mere snapping of the threads across the chasm which had always separated Rachel from her second husband.

The chasm had been plain enough to those who came much in contact with the pair, but the little threads of sympathy were invisible to the naked eye of ordinary observation.

There was thus no outward change, for neither was there any outward rupture.
It takes two to quarrel, and Steel imperturbably refused to make one.
Rachel might be as trying as she pleased; no repulse depressed, no caprice annoyed him; and this insensibility was not the least of Steel's offences in the now jaundiced eyes of his wife.
Rachel felt as bitter as one only does against those who have inspired some softer feeling; the poison of misplaced confidence rankled in her blood.

Her husband had told her much, but it was not enough for Rachel, and the little he refused to tell eliminated all the rest from her mind.