His own miserable reverie absorbed him.

What was it that had made the charm of those early weeks in July immediately after his parting with her?
What was it which had added zest to his work, and enchantment to the summer beauty of the country, and, like a hidden harmony dimly resonant within him, had kept life tuneful and delightful?
He could put words to it now.

It had been nothing less than a settled foresight, a deep conviction, of _Isabel Bretherton's failure_! What a treachery! But yes,--the vision perpetually before his eyes had been the vision of a dying fame, a waning celebrity, a forsaken and discrowned beauty! And from that abandonment and that failure he had dimly foreseen the rise and upspringing of new and indescribable joy.

He had seen her, conscious of defeat and of the inexorable limits of her own personality, turning to the man who had read her truly and yet had loved her, surely, from the very beginning, and finding in his love a fresh glory and an all-sufficient consolation.

This had been the inmost truth, the centre, the kernel of all his thought, of all his life.