stiny. Lydia was so compact of sweetnesses that she
would be courted and married, and who was Anne, to know how to marry her
rightly? So she slept, after a troubled interval; but Lydia lay awake
and stared the darkness through as if it held new paths to her desire.
What was her desire? She did not know, save that it had all to do with
Jeff. He had been cruelly used. He must not be so dealt with any more.
Her passion for his well-being, germinating and growing through the
years she had not seen him, had come to flower in a hot resolve that he
should be happy now. And in some way, some headlong, resistless way, she
knew she was to make his happiness, and yet in her allegiance to him
there was trouble and pain. He had made her into a new creature. The
kiss had done it.

He would not, Lydia thought, have kissed her if it were wrong, and yet
the kiss was different from all others and she must never tell. Nor must
it come again. She was plighted to him, not as to a man free to love
her, but to his well-being; and it was all most sacred and not to be
undone. She was exalted and she was shuddering with a formless sense of
the earth sway upon her. She had ever been healthy-minded as a child;
even the pure imaginings of love had not beguiled her. But now something
had come out of the earth or the air and called to her, and she had
answered; and because it was so inevitable it was right--yet right for
only him to know. Who else could understand?

XIII

Lydia did not think she dreaded seeing him next morning. The fabric they
had begun to weave together looked too splendid for covering trivial
little fears like that. Or was it strong enough to cover anything? Yet
when he came into the room where they were at breakfast she could not
look at him with the same unwavering eyes. She had, strangely, and sadly
too, the knowledge of life. But if she had looked at him she would have
seen how he was changed. He had pulled himself together. Whether what
happened or what might happen had tutored him, he was on guard,
ready--for himself most of all. And after breakfast where Anne and the
colonel had contributed the mild commonplaces useful at least in
breaking such constraints, he followed the colonel into the library and
sat down with him. The colonel, from his chair by the window, regarded
his son in a fond approval. Even to his eyes where Jeff was always a
grateful visitant, the more so now after he had been so poignantly
desired,