drank almost without speech, soberly delighted by the
mellowing of the world that followed the dwindling of the sunset fires.
All things seemed to become more modest and reconciled; and farmers
hawked out their last jests at one another, mounted their gigs and drove
home; and the flocks of sheep and droves of cattle pattered by, bleating
and lowing not so heartrendingly.

Ellen rose, went over to the mantelpiece and stroked the china dogs, and
sat down in an armchair by the fire. "This has been a lovely day," she
murmured. She joined her hands behind her head and crossed her knees and
smiled blindishly into the shadow; and his heart turned over in him. All
his life he would remember her just as she was then: the lovely attitude
of body that was at once angular and softly sensuous, like a
blossom-laden branch; the pure pearl colour of her skin, the pure bright
colours of her hair and eyes and mouth; the passionate and funny, shrewd
and credulous pattern of her features; and that dozing smile, that
looked as if her soul had ceased to run up and down enquiringly and was
resting awhile to enjoy the sweetness that was its own climate. He would
never forget her as she was looking then. She might turn away from him,
she might get old, she might die, but the memory of her as she was at
that moment would endure for ever in his heart, an eternally living
thing. He was aware, reluctantly enough, for he hated such mystical
knowledge, and would have given the world to see life as a plain round
of dicing and drinking and wenching, that real love was somehow a cruel
thing for women; that the hour when she became his wife would be as
illimitably tragic as it would be illimitably glorious. But love was
also very kind to women, since it enabled them to live always at their
loveliest in their lover's memories, there perpetually exempt from the
age and ugliness that even the bravest of them seemed pitifully to fear.

Yet, of course love was not so kind to every woman. No one remembered
his mother as he would remember Ellen. He began to ponder what his
mother must have been like when she was that age, and it marked a
certain difference between him and other men, that he was grudgingly
surprised that the girl he meant to marry was as beautiful as his
mother. Certainly, he reflected, with a bitter, gloating grief, Marion
Yaverland must have been beautiful enough to deserve a lodging in some
man's memory. She must have been brilliantly attract