ffection, and that all material things existed
only to enshrine and subserve emotion.

Their life seemed to take on a new colour and intensity. They talked
less; up till now it had been a perpetual delight to Howard to elicit
Maud's thoughts and fancies about a thousand things, about books,
people, ideas. Her prejudices, ignorances, enthusiasms half charmed,
half amused him. But now they could sit or walk silent together in an
even more tranquil happiness; nearness was enough, and thought seemed
to pass between them without need of speech. Howard began to resume his
work; it was enough that Maud should sit by, reading, working, writing.
A glance would pass between them and suffice.

One day Howard laid down his pen, and looking up, having finished a
chapter, saw that Maud's eyes were fixed upon him with an anxious
intentness. She was sitting in a low chair near the fire, and an open
book lay disregarded on her knee. He went across to her and sat down on
a low chair beside her, taking her hand in his.

"What is it, dear child?" he said. "Am I very selfish and stupid to sit
here without a word like this?"

Maud put her lips to his hand, and laughed a contented laugh. "Oh no,
no," she said; "I like to see you hard at work--there seems no need to
say anything--it's just you and me!"

"Well," said Howard, "you must just tell me what you were thinking--you
had travelled a long way beyond that."

"Not out of your reach," said Maud; "I was just thinking how different
men and women were, and how I liked you to be different. I was
remembering how awfully mysterious you were at first--so full to the
brim of strange things which I could not fathom. I always seemed to be
dislodging something I had never thought of. I used to wonder how you
could find time, in the middle of it all, to care about me: you were
always giving me something. But now it has all grown so much simpler
and more wonderful too. It's like what you said about Cambridge long
ago, the dark secret doorways, the hidden gardens; I see now that all
those ideas and thoughts are only things you are carrying with you,
like luggage. They are not part of you at all. Don't you know how, when
one is quite a child, a person's house seems to be all a mysterious
part of himself? One thinks he has chosen and arranged it all, knows
where everything is and what it means--everything seems to be a sort of
deliberate expression of his tastes and ideas--and, then one gets
older,