For why should he be supposed to molest the happy hours of the woman he loved, and what could be the sorrow that dogged her life, if her happy hours were supposed to be rare and precious?
O'Shea's wife he had observed before this to be a faithful and trusted friend of her mistress; no doubt she spoke then with the authority of knowledge and love.
Caius went home, and put away his horse, and entered his small house.
Everything was changed to him; a knowledge that he had vaguely dreaded had come, but with a grief that he had never dreamed of.

For he had fancied that if it should turn out that his lady-love and Madame Le Maitre were one, his would only be the disappointment of having loved a shadow, a character of his own creating, and that the woman herself he would not love; but now that was not what had befallen him.
All the place was deserted; not a house had shown a sign of life as he passed.

All the world had gone after the seals.

This, no doubt, was the reason why the two women who had not cared for the hunting had taken that day for a holiday.

Caius stood at his window and looked out on the sea of ice for a little while.