When his domestic affairs had reached a crisis, Thorne had quietly
disappeared for a year, during which time people only knew that he was
enjoying his recovered freedom in distant and little frequented places.
There were rumors of him in Tartary, on the Niger, in Siberia. At the
expiration of the year he returned to New York, and resumed his old
place in society as though nothing untoward had occurred. He lived at
his club, and no man or woman ever saw him set foot within the
precincts of his own house. Occasionally he was seen to stop the nurse
in the park, and caress and speak to his little son. His life was that
of a single man. In the society they both frequented, he often
encountered his wife, and always behaved to her with scrupulous
politeness, even with marked courtesy. If he ever missed his home, or
experienced regret for his matrimonial failure, he kept the feeling
hidden, and presented to the world an unmoved front.

In default of nearer ties, he made himself at home in his aunt's house,
frequenting it as familiarly as he had done in the days before his
marriage. In his strong, almost passionate nature, there was one great
weakness; the love and admiration of women was a necessity to him. He
could no more help trying to make women love him, than the kingfisher
can help thrusting down his beak when the bright speckled sides of his
prey flash through the water. It was from neither cruelty nor vanity,
for Thorne had less of both traits than usually falls to the lot of
men; it was rather from the restlessness, the yearning of a strong
nature for that which it needed, but had not yet attained; the
experimental searching of a soul for its mate. That sorrow might come
to others in the search he scarcely heeded; was he to blame that fair
promises would bud and lead him on, and fail of fruition? To himself
he seemed rather to be pitied; their loss was balanced by his own.
Thorne had never loved as he was capable of loving; as yet the _ego_