th him as a husband. But beneath this apparent happiness of
hers had some instinct, incomprehensible to him, been whispering to her
that he did not love her as many men, perhaps most, loved their young
wives? That he had felt for her no ardor, no worship? If so, then the
crisis had come at the right moment; at the moment when, by one of those
tricks of nature which make us half acquiesce in the belief that our
personality is an illusion, that we are but cosmic automata, the power
of love had been granted to him again. Yet for all that--very
fortunately, seeing that the crisis was more acute than he was aware--he
did not fancy that his way lay plain before him. He began to perceive
that the cementing of a close union between a man and woman, two beings
with so abundant a capacity for misunderstanding each other, is a
complex and delicate affair. That to marry is to be a kind of Odysseus
advancing into the palace of a Circe, nobler and more humane than the
enchantress of old, yet capable also of working strange and terrible
transformations. That many go in there carrying in their hands blossoms
which they believe to be moly; but the true moly is not easy to
distinguish. And he hoped that he and Milly, in their different ways,
had found and were both wearing the milk-white flower. Yet he knew that
this was a matter which must be left to the arbitrament of time.

CHAPTER IX

On their return to Oxford the young couple were feted beyond the common.
People who had known Milly Flaxman in earlier days were surprised to
think how little they had noticed her beauty or guessed what a fund of
humor, what an extraordinary charm, had lurked beneath the surface of
her former quiet, grave manner. The Master of Durham alone refused to be
surprised. He merely affirmed in his short squeak that he had always
admired Mrs. Stewart very much. She was now frequently to be found in
the place of honor at those dinners of his, where distinguished visitors
from London brought the stir and color of the great world into the
austere groves, the rarefied atmosphere of Academe.

Wherever she appeared, the vivid personality of Mrs. Stewart made a kind
of effervescence which that indescribable entity, a vivid personality,
is sure to keep fizzing about it. She was devoutly admired, fiercely
criticised, and asked everywhere. It is true she had quite given up her
music, but she drew caricatures which were irresistibly funny, and was a
tremendous su