, some hesitation
when first he had heard that it was to be.

He _had_ protested, but now he felt that he should have done more.

Soon he had his answer to all his questions.

He saw at once that Rachel was no longer the impulsive, nervous girl
whom he had always known. She was a girl no longer.

Her eyes greeted him now steadily, she seemed taller and her body was in
perfect control--very tall and slim and dark, her cheeks pale but
shadowed a little with the shadow deepening beneath her eyes. Her mouth,
that had always been too large, had had before a delightful quality of
uncertainty, so that smiles and frowns and alarms, distress and
happiness all hovered near. It was now grave and composed.

Her limbs had always moved unsteadily and with the awkward lack of
control of a child, now there was no kind of impulse, every movement was
considered, and that was the first thing that Christopher saw, that
nothing that Rachel now did or said was spontaneous.

There was less in her now to remind him of her foreign blood.

The flat was comfortable, but more commonplace than it would have been
had it been Rachel's only.

He kissed her, as he had always done, and he fancied that she clung for
a moment to him, as her hands went up to his coat.

He settled his big loose body and looked across at her.

Christopher was no subtle analyser of other people's emotions. His own
feelings were never complicated and he expected life to run on plain and
simple lines of likes and dislikes, sorrow, anger, love and hatred. If
someone of whom he was fond made a direct appeal to him his simple
remedies were often wonderfully useful--he was no fool and he had been
brought, during a great number of years, into the most direct relations
with men and women, but, if that direct appeal was not made, then he was
frightened and baffled.

He was frightened of Rachel now; he knew instantly that instead of
appealing she would defend herself from him.... Some mysterious
conviction seemed to forebode that he would not be able to help her. He
was, essentially, of those who, believing in goodness and virtue and the
glorious Millennium, are contented, quite simply, with that belief and
might, if they stated those simplicities, irritate the scoffers. But he
was saved because he made statements on the rarest occasions and lived
his life instead.

Here, however, was a crisis in his relations with Rachel that no
platitudes could satisfy. Did he not touch