Then she closed the book, held by the thought of her husband—­in a somewhat melancholy reverie.

There is a Catholic word with which in her convent youth she had been very familiar—­the word recueilli—­“recollected.”  At no time had it sounded kindly in her ears; for it implied fetters and self—­suppressions—­of the voluntary and spiritual sort—­wholly unwelcome to and unvalued by her own temperament.  But who that knew him well could avoid applying it to Delafield?  A man of “recollection” living in the eye of the Eternal; keeping a guard over himself in the smallest matters of thought and action; mystically possessed by the passion of a spiritual ideal; in love with charity, purity, simplicity of life.

She bowed her head upon her hands in dreariness of spirit.  Ultimately, what could such a man want with her?  What had she to give him?  In what way could she ever be necessary to him?  And a woman, even in friendship, must feel herself that to be happy.

Already this daily state in which she found herself—­of owing everything and giving nothing—­produced in her a secret irritation and repulsion; how would it be in the years to come?

“He never saw me as I am,” she thought to herself, looking fretfully back to their past acquaintance.  “I am neither as weak as he thinks me—­nor as clever.  And how strange it is—­this tension in which he lives!”

And as she sat there idly plucking at the wet grass, her mind was overrun with a motley host of memories—­some absurd, some sweet, some of an austerity that chilled her to the core.  She thought of the difficulty she had in persuading Delafield to allow himself even necessary comforts and conveniences; a laugh, involuntary, and not without tenderness, crossed her face as she recalled a tale he had told her at Camaldoli, of the contempt excited in a young footman of a smart house by the mediocrity and exiguity of his garments and personal appointments generally.  “I felt I possessed nothing that he would have taken as a gift,” said Delafield, with a grin.  “It was chastening.”

Yet though he laughed, he held to it; and Julie was already so much of the wife as to be planning how to coax him presently out of a portmanteau and a top-hat that were in truth a disgrace to their species.

And all the time she must have the best of everything—­a maid, luxurious travelling, dainty food.  They had had one or two wrestles on the subject already.  “Why are you to have all the high thinking and plain living to yourself?” she had asked him, angrily, only to be met by the plea, “Dear, get strong first—­then you shall do what you like.”