. She
had been called, created, for an end beyond herself. The woman he had
married again was pure from passion, and of an uncomfortable reluctance
in the giving and taking of caresses. He forced himself to respect her
reluctance. He had simply to accept this emotional parsimony as one of
the many curious facts about Anne. He no longer went to Edith for an
explanation of them, for the Anne he had known in Westleydale was too
sacred to be spoken of. An immense reverence possessed him when he
thought of her. As for the actual present Anne, loyalty was part of the
large simplicity of his nature, and he could not criticise her.
Remembering Westleydale, he told himself that her blanched susceptibility
was tenderness at white heat. If she said little, he argued that (like
himself) she felt the more. And at times she could say perfect things.

"I wonder, Nancy," he once said to her, "if you know how divinely sweet
your voice is?"

"I shall begin to think it is, if you think so," said she.

"And would you think yourself beautiful, if I thought so?"

"Very beautiful. At any rate, as beautiful as I want to be."

He could not control the demonstration provoked by that admission, and
she asked him if he were coming to church with her to-morrow.

His Nancy chose her moments strangely.

But not for worlds would he have admitted that she was deficient in
a sense of humour. She had her small hilarities that passed for it.
Keenness in that direction would have done violence to the repose and
sweetness of her blessed presence. The peace of it remained with him
during his hours of business.

Anne did not like his business. But, in spite of it, she was proud
of him, of his appearance, his charm, his distinction, his entire
superiority to even the aristocracy of Scale.

She no longer resented his indifference to her friends in Thurston
Square, since it meant that he desired to have her to himself. Of his own
friends he had seen little, and she nothing. If she had not pressed Fanny
Eliott on him, he had spared her Mrs. Lawson Hannay and Mrs. Dick
Ransome. She had been fortunate enough to find both these ladies out when
she returned their calls. And Majendie had spoken of his most intimate
friend, Charlie Gorst, as absent on a holiday in Norway.

It was, therefore, in a mood of more than usual concession that she
proposed to return, now in October, the second advance made to her by
Mrs. Hannay in July.

Majendie was relieved to t