her as she had been, he only knew her as she was now.  That, however, fully satisfied his critical taste.  The marvel of her alabaster skin, fleckless and flawless, the glory of her glittering red hair, the sea-depths of her cool, gray-green eyes, the reserve of her expression, the virginal curve of her lip, enchanted him.  He liked the tall, slender strength of her, the lightness of her step, her grace when she danced, her spirited pose when she rode.  Here was the woman, the one woman, to bear his name, to be the mistress of his house.  She was the only woman he had ever really wished to marry.  And she was nominally married to Peter Champneys.

Hayden was honorable.  Had hers been a real marriage, had she been a happy wife, he would have respected the tie that bound her, and gone his way.  But the situation was exceptional.  She wasn’t really a wife at all, and like Mrs. Vandervelde, he could see in such a marriage nothing but a cause for mutual disgust and dislike.  Well, then, if he loved her, and Peter Champneys didn’t, he certainly was not working Peter Champneys any harm in winning away from him a wife he didn’t want.  Why should he stand aside and let her go, for such a shadow as that ceremony had been?  The Champneys money?  That meant nothing weighed in the balance with his desire.  He could give her as much, and more, than she would forego.  Mrs. Berkeley Hayden would eclipse Mrs. Peter Champneys.

Deliberately, then, but delicately, after his fashion, Hayden set himself to win Anne Champneys.  He felt that his passion for her gave him the right.  He meant to make her happy.  She could have her marriage annulled.  Then she would become Mrs. Berkeley Hayden.  Even the fact that he really knew very little about her did not trouble him.  He coveted her, and he meant to have her.

He read the young Italian’s sonnets, which she had inspired, and they made him thoughtful.  He could readily understand the depths of feeling such a woman could arouse.  Had she no heart, as the Italian lamented?  He wondered.  It came to him that she was, in truth, detached, sufficient to herself, an ungregarious creature moving solitarily in a mysterious world all her own.  What did she think?  What did she feel?  He didn’t know.  He was allowed to see certain aspects of her intelligence, and her quickness of perception, the delicacy of her fancy, her childlike and morning freshness, and a pungently shrewd Americanism that flashed out at odd and unexpected moments, never failed to delight him.  But her deeper thoughts, her real feelings, her heart, remained sealed and closed to him.