It
was a very different home-coming to the one she had anticipated. Two
years before she had set out in the best of health and spirits, with
every prospect of a long and prosperous career at Damascus for her
husband and herself. Now, almost without warning, they had come home
with their prospects shattered and their career broken. Nevertheless
these untoward circumstances served in no way to weaken her energies;
on the contrary, they seemed to lend her strength.
She found her husband occupying one room in an obscure hotel off
Manchester Square, engaged as usual with his writings, and apparently
absorbed in them. He seemed to have forgotten that such a place as
Damascus existed. She found that he had accepted his recall literally.
He had made no defence to the Foreign Office, nor sought for any
explanation. He had treated the affair _de haut en bas_, and had
left things to take their course. He in fact expressed himself to
her as "sick of the whole thing," and he took the darkest view of the
future. "Are you not afraid?" he asked her, referring to their gloomy
prospects. "Afraid?" she echoed. "What, when I have you?" This was
the day she came back. He did not refer to the subject again, but
returned to his manuscripts, and apparently wanted nothing but to be
left alone.
But his wife knew him better; she knew that deep down under his seeming
indifference there was a rankling sense of injustice.
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