They looked at each other and he took again the impression she had always given him of delicate beauty and sweetness.  She was tall and her neck bent slightly forward as she walked; this gave her the air of bowing prettily, of offering you something with a charming grace.  Her shoulders and her hips had the same long, slenderly sloping curves.  Her hair was mole brown on the top and turned back in an old-fashioned way that uncovered its hidden gold.  Her face was white; the thin bluish whiteness of skim milk.  Her mauve blue eyes looked larger than they were because of their dark brows and lashes, and the faint mauve smears about their lids.  The line of her little slender nose went low and straight in the bridge, then curved under, delicately acquiline, its nostrils were close and clean cut.  Her small, close upper lip had a flying droop; and her chin curved slightly, ever so slightly, away to her throat.  When she talked Maisie’s mouth and the tip of her nose kept up the same sensitive, quivering play.  But Maisie’s eyes were still; they had no sparkling speech; they listened, deeply attentive to the person who was there.  They took up the smile her mouth began and was too small to finish.

And now, as they looked at him, he felt that he ought to take her in his arms, suddenly, at once.  In another instant it would be too late, the action would have lost the grace of spontaneous impulse.  He wondered how you simulated a spontaneous impulse.

But Maisie made it all right for him.  As he stood waiting for his impulse she came to him and laid her hands on his shoulders and kissed him, gently, on each cheek.  Her hands slid down; they pressed hard against his arms above the elbow, as if to keep back his too passionate embrace.  It was easy enough to return her kiss, to pass his arms under hers and press her slight body, gently, with his cramped hands.  Did she know that his heart was not in it?

No.  She knew nothing.

“What have you been doing with yourself?” she said.  “You do look fit.”

“Do I?  Oh, nothing much.”

He turned away from her sweet eyes that hurt him.

At least he could bring forward a chair for her, and put cushions at her back, and pour out her tea and wait on her.  He tried by a number of careful, deliberate attentions to make up for his utter lack of spontaneity.  And she sat there, drinking her tea, contented; pleased to be back in her happy home; serenely unaware that anything was missing.

He took her over the house and showed her her room, the long room with the two south windows, one on each side of the square, cross-lighted bay above the porch.  It was full of the clear April light.

Maisie looked round, taking it all in, the privet-white panels, the lovely faded Persian rugs, the curtains of old rose damask.  An armchair and a round table with a bowl of pink tulips on it stood in the centre of the bay.

“Is this mine, this heavenly room?”