When he had changed his soaking garments, he came back into his sitting-room and pulled Binko upon his knees. The dog and his fat wrinkles seemed some kind of comfort to him.
"She remembered you, Binko, old man," he said, caressing the creature's ears. "She is the sweetest little darling in all the world. You would have loved her soft brown hair and her round dimpled cheek. And she loves your master, Binko, just as he loves her; she has forgiven him for everything of long ago--and if she could, she would come back here, and live with us and make us divinely happy--as we believed she was going to do once when we were young."
And then he thought suddenly of Henry's home--the stately Elizabethan house amidst luxuriant, peaceful scenery--not grim and strong like Arranstoun--though she preferred gaunt castles, evidently, since she had bought Héronac for her own. But the thought of Henry's home and her adorning it brought too intimate pictures to his imagination; they galled him so that at last he could not bear it and started to his feet.
It was possible to part from her and go away, but it was not possible to contemplate calmly the fact of her being the wife of another man. Material things came always more vividly to Michael than spiritual ones, and the vision he had conjured up was one of Sabine encircled by Henry's arms. This was unbearable--and before he was aware of it he found he was clenching his fists in rage, and that Binko was sitting on his haunches, blinking at him, with his head on one side in his endeavors to understand.
Michael pulled himself together and laughed bitterly aloud.
"I must just never think of it, old man," he told the dog, "or I shall go mad."
Then he sat down again. With what poignant regret he looked back upon his original going to China! If only he had stayed and gone after her, that next day, and seized her again, and brought her back here to this room--they would have had five years of happiness. She was sweeter now far than she had been then, and he could have watched her developing, instead of her coming to perfection all alone. That under these circumstances she might never have acquired that polish of mind, and strange dignity and reserve of manner which was one of her greatest attractions, did not strike him--as it has been plainly said, he was not given to analysis in his judgment of things.