He bent down, and prepared his lips to kiss her.  He smiled superiorly, indulgently.  He was the stronger.  She defeated him sometimes; she gravely defeated him in the general arrangement and colour of their joint existence; but he was the stronger.  She had known it for over ten years.  They had had two tremendous, critical, highly dangerous battles.  He had won them both.  Lois had wanted to be married in Paris.  He had been ready to agree until suddenly it occurred to him that French legal formalities might necessitate an undue disclosure as to his parentage and the bigamy of which his mother had been a victim.  He refused absolutely to be married in Paris.  He said:  “You’re English and I’m English, and the proper place for us to be married is England.”  There were good counter-arguments, but he would not have them.  Curiously, at this very period, news came from his stepfather of his father’s death in America.  He kept it to himself.  Again, on the night itself of their marriage, he had said to her:  “Now give me that revolver you’ve got.”  At her protesting refusal he had said:  “My wife is not going about with any revolver.  Not if I know it!” He was playful but determined.  He startled her, for the altercation lasted two hours.  On the other hand he had never said a word about the photograph of Jules Defourcambault, and had never seen it.  Somewhere, in some mysterious fastness, the mysterious woman kept it.

His lips were close to hers, and his eyes to her eyes.  Most persons called her eyes golden, but to him they were just yellow.  They had an infinitesimal cast, to which nobody ever referred.  They were voluptuous eyes.  He examined her face.  She was still young; but the fine impressive imprint of existence was upon her features, and the insipid freshness had departed.  She blinked, acquiescent.  Her eyes changed, melting.  He could almost see into her brain, and watch there the impulse of repentance for an unreasonable caprice, and the intense resolve to think in the future only of her husband’s welfare.  She was like that....  She could be an angel....  He knew that he was hard.  He guessed that he might be inordinately hard He would bear people down.  Why had he not been touched by her helpless condition?  She was indeed touching as she lay.  She wanted to keep him near her and she could not.  She wanted acutely to go to the north, and she was imprisoned.  She would have to pass the night alone, and the next night alone.  Danger and great suffering lay in front of her.  And she was she; she was herself, with all her terrific instincts.  She could not alter herself.  Did she not merit compassion?  Still, he must go to his club.

He kissed her tenderly.  She half lifted her head, and kissed him exactly as she kissed his children, like a giantess, and as though she was the ark of wisdom from everlasting, and he a callow boy whose safety depended upon her sagacious, loving direction.