lay over
him.

"Did you like it?" she asked gravely.

"Like it? I love it."

"So do I. I _hoped_ you would."

"My dear, I didn't understand one word of it."

"You can't make me believe you loved it then."

He looked at her.

"I loved the sound of your voice, dear."

"Oh," said she coldly, "is that all?"

"Yes," he said, "isn't it enough?"

"I'd rather--" she began and hesitated.

"You'd rather I understood Emerson?"

Her blood flushed in the honey whiteness of her face. She rose, put the
book in its place, and left the room.

"Edith," he said, relating the incident afterwards, "I thought she was
coming round when she wanted to read to me. Why did she get up and go
like that?"

"She went, dear goose, because she was afraid to stay."

"Why afraid?"

"Because she's fighting you, Wallie. It's all right if she's got to
fight."

"Yes, but suppose she wins?"

"She can't win fighting--she's a woman. Her only chance is to run away."

That night Anne knelt by her bedside and hid her face and prayed for
Walter; that he might be purified, so that she might love him without
sin; that he and she might travel together on the divine way, and
together be received into the heavenly places.

She had felt that night the stirring of natural affection. It had come
back to her, a feeble, bruised, humiliated thing. She could not harbour
it without spiritual justification.

She kept herself awake by saying: "I can't love him, I can't love
him--unless God makes him fit for me to love."

Sleeping, she dreamed that she was in his arms.

CHAPTER IX

It was Anne's birthday. It shone in mid-May like the front of June.
Anne's bedroom was over Edith's and looked out on the garden. A little
rain had fallen over night. Through the open window the day greeted
her with a breath of flowers and earth; a day that came to her all
golden, ripe and sweet from the south.

Her dressing-table was placed sideways from the window. Anne, fresh from
her cold bath, in a white muslin gown, with her thick sleek hair coiled
and burnished, sat before the looking-glass.

There was a knock at the door, not Nanna's bold awakening summons, but a
shy and gentle sound. Her heart shook her voice as she responded.

"Is it permitted?" said Majendie.

"If you like," she answered quietly.

He presented his customary morning sacrifice of flowers. Hitherto he
had not presumed so far as to bring it to her room. It waited for her
decorously