One after another the days glided by, while with the sharpened senses of a great love she watched for a sign of the thing that slept in him—­of the thing that had driven him home from his wanderings to re-create his life.  When it awoke, she would have to share him; now he was hers alone.  Her feelings towards this thing did not assume the proportions of jealousy or fear; they were merely alert, vaguely disquieting.  The sleeping thing was not a monster.  No, but it might grow into one, if its appetite were not satisfied, and blame her.

She told herself that, had he lacked ambition, she could not have loved him, and did not stop to reflect upon the completeness of her satisfaction with the Viking.  He seemed, indeed, in these weeks, one whom the sea has marked for its own, and her delight in watching him as he moved about the boat never palled.  His nose reminded her of the prow of a ship of war, and his deep-set eyes were continually searching the horizon for an enemy.  Such were her fancies.  In the early morning when he donned his sleeveless bathing suit, she could never resist the temptation to follow him on deck to see him plunge into the cold ocean:  it gave her a delightful little shiver—­and he was made like one of the gods of Valhalla.

She had discovered, too, in these intimate days, that he had the Northman’s temperament; she both loved and dreaded his moods.  And sometimes, when the yacht glided over smoother seas, it was his pleasure to read to her, even poetry and the great epics.  That he should be fond of the cruel Scotch ballads she was not surprised; but his familiarity with the book of Job, and his love for it, astonished her.  It was a singular library that he had put on board the ‘Adhemar’.

One evening when the sails flapped idly and the blocks rattled, when they had been watching in silence the flaming orange of the sunset above the amethystine Camden hills, he spoke the words for which she had been waiting.

“Honora, what do you say to going back to Grenoble?”

She succeeded in smiling at him.

“Whenever you like, Hugh,” she said.

So the bowsprit of the ‘Adhemar’ was turned homewards; and with every league of water they left behind them his excitement and impatience seemed to grow.

“I can’t wait to show it to you, Honora—­to see you in it,” he exclaimed.  “I have so long pictured you there, and our life as it will be.”

CHAPTER XII

THE ENTRANCE INTO EDEN

They had travelled through the night, and in the early morning left the express at a junction.  Honora sat in the straight-backed seat of the smaller train with parted lips and beating heart, gazing now and again at the pearly mists rising from the little river valley they were climbing.  Chiltern was like a schoolboy.