“George!” she called, and went swiftly toward him.

He turned, threw away the cigar in his hand, and held open the gate while she entered.

“There’s a jolly little beggar up in the poplar,” he said; “I’ve been watching him for ten minutes.”

Then, as she passed before him into the parlour, he shut the door, and catching her in his arms, kissed the back of her neck.

“Oh, George!” she murmured, and her voice was like music.  Even to his short-sighted vision there was pathos at the heart of her happiness—­the pathos of ignorance, Of innocence, of the reckless generosity of soul that spends its best for the pure joy of spending.  With the instinctive miserliness of the man who realizes that passion to last must be hoarded, not scattered, he had drawn back almost unconsciously from the simple abandonment of her love.  He wanted her because the deep discomfort of his nature could not be satisfied without her; but in possessing her he did not mean to give up anything else.  Never for an instant had he deluded himself with the mystic ecstasies of Gabriella.  The passion which had changed her whole being as if by a miracle, had altered neither his fundamental egoism nor his superficial philosophy.  He loved her, he knew, as much as it was possible for him to love any woman; but he was still able to take a profound and healthy interest in his physical comfort.  In one thing, however, they were passionately agreed, and that was that the aim and end of their marriage was to make George perfectly happy.

“You are sweet enough to eat this morning,” he said as he kissed her.

“I told Mrs. Peyton that you didn’t know whether I was pretty or ugly,” she answered merrily.

“It isn’t beauty that takes a man, though women think so,” he rejoined lightly, and yet as if he were imparting one of the basic facts of experience.  “I don’t know what it is—­but it’s something else, and you’ve got it, Gabriella.”

She looked at him with luminous eyes.

“I’ve got you,” she answered in a whisper; “that’s all—­nothing else on earth matters.  I want nothing but love.”

“But you let me go away for six months.  I could never understand that.”

“I had to, George.  I couldn’t be mean even for you, could I?”

“Well, I don’t know.”  His gaze dwelt on her moodily.  “Sometimes I wonder if you haven’t too much conscience in your body?”

Careless as were his words, they brought stinging tears to her eyes.  Her throat ached with the longing to pour out her love; but it seemed to her suddenly that a wall of personality had risen between them, and that she could only beat blindly against the impenetrable mass that divided them.  She knew now that he could never understand, and yet the knowledge of this intensified rather than diminished her love.  The mere physical attraction, which she had glorified into passion, was invested with the beauty and the mystery of an unattainable ideal.