houlder.
She might have been asleep but that she sometimes put up her hand and
stroked his hair and traced his eyebrows and made a little purring
noise; and once she cried a little and exclaimed pettishly, "It's just
lack of sleep. I'm not anxious. I'm not a bit anxious." And presently
she looked up at the alarum clock and said, "That's never nine? We must
go. Richard, you are great company!" She ran upstairs to dress, singing
in the sweetest little voice, wild yet low and docile, such as a bird
might have if it were christened. When she came down she faced him with
gentle defiance and said, "I know I'm awful plain to-night. I suppose
you'll not love me any more?" He answered, "Be downright ugly if you
can. It won't matter to me. I love you anyhow." She lifted her hand to
turn out the gas and smiled at him over her shoulder. "If that's not
handsome!" she drawled mockingly, but in her glance, though she dropped
her lids, there burned a flame of earnestness, and just as he was going
to open the front door she slipped into his arms and rested there,
shaken with some deep emotion, with words she felt too young to say.

"What is it? What is it you want to say? Tell me."

"Do you think we can do it, Richard? Love each other always. Now, it's
easy. We're young. It's easier to be nice when you're young.... But
mother and father must have cared for each other once. She kept his
letters. After everything she kept his letters.... It's when one gets
old ... old people quarrel and are mean. Ah, do you think we will be
able to keep it up?"

She was remembering, he could see, the later married life of her
parents, and conceiving it for the first time not with the harsh
Puritan moral vision of the young, as the inevitable result of
deliberate ill-conduct, but as the decay of an intention for which the
persons involved were hardly more to blame than is an industrious
gardener for the death of a plant whose habit he has not understood. It
was, to one newly possessed of happiness, a terrifying conception.

He muttered, low-voiced and ashamed as those are who speak of things
much more sacred than the common tenor of their lives: "Of course it'll
be difficult after the first few years. But it's hard to be a saint. Yet
there have been saints. All that they do for their religion I'll do for
you. I will keep clear of evil things lest they spoil the feelings I
have for you. I.... There are thoughts like prayers.... And, darling ...
I do not