Her housewifely ways, her pretty anxiety about spending money, amused him tenderly.  When she could perform some small service for him, she hummed little hymns to the Virgin.  Her ministrations extended to Stocks and the Checkleighs, whose shirts she mended so expertly that they didn’t have to borrow so many of Peter’s.  She was so happy that Peter Champneys grew happy watching her.  It hadn’t seemed possible to Denise that anybody like him could exist; yet here he was, and she belonged to him!

Nobody had ever loved Peter Champneys in quite the same way.  She had so real and true a genius for loving that she exhaled affection as a flower exhales perfume.  Loving was an instinct with Denise.  She would steal to his side, slip her arm around his neck, kiss him on the eyes—­“thy beautiful eyes, Pierre!”—­and cuddle her cheek against his, with so exquisite a tenderness in touch and look that the young man’s kind heart melted in his breast.  He couldn’t speak.  He could only gather her close, pressing his black head against her soft young bosom.

Her cruel experience with Dangeau was not forgotten; but that had been capture by force, and she remembered it as a black background against which the bright colors of this present happiness showed with a heavenlier radiance.  Peter himself didn’t guess how wholly his little comrade loved him, though he did realize her utter selflessness.  She never asked him troublesome questions, never annoyed him with irritating jealousy, made no demands upon him.  Was he not himself?  Very well, then:  did not that suffice?  Denise didn’t think:  she felt.  She had the exquisite wisdom of the heart, and in her small hands the flower of Peter Champneys’s youth opened and blossomed.  He was young, he was loved, he was busy.  Oh, but it was a good world to be alive in!  He whistled while he worked.  And how he worked!  To this period belong those angelic heads, chestnut-haired, wistfully smiling, with blue eyes that look deep into one’s heart.  The airy butterfly that signs these canvases is not so much a symbol as a prescience.

When was it he first noticed that for all his love and care he wasn’t going to be able to keep Denise?  How did he learn that the great last lover was wooing her away?  She was not less happy.  A deep and still joy radiated from her, her eyes had the clear and cloudless happiness of a child’s.  But he observed that on their pleasant excursions into the country she tired quickly.  Her little light feet didn’t run any more.  She preferred to sit cuddled against his side, holding his hand in both hers, her head pressed against his shoulder.  She didn’t talk, but then, he was used to her silence; that was one of her sweetest charms.  Her cheek grew thinner, but the rose in it deepened.  Then the pretty dresses he loved to lavish upon her began to hang loosely upon her little body.

It was a frightened young man who called in doctors and specialists.  But, as Henri had once told him, they do not last long, these frail blondes.  Also, she was of the sort that loves—­and that, you understand, is fatal!