I thrill before Isabel, but I give my feelings no expression.  There are looks, no doubt, hesitations of speech, flutterings of the heart, that she may hear.  But she is encompassed with flame that bars my way.  I do not try to pass.  We are all friends together, Isabel, Uncle Tom, and I. No plans are made which exclude Uncle Tom.  Isabel and I have no secrets, no stealings away, no intimacies however slight, no quick withdrawals upon the sound of his step.  Everything is known to Uncle Tom.  I had impulses to all clearness of conduct in the circumstance that Uncle Tom is so much my friend.  He treats me like a father; he is always doing generous things for me.  He is delighted to see Isabel go with me to a church or a gallery, when he is too tired or too ill to accompany us, and that is often.

And day by day Isabel was happier.  She became a creature of glories, shining transparencies.  We had books together, music together, our work together.  We had the companionship of the morning and the evening meal, sacred rituals between beings who love each other.  We had infinite talks together with Uncle Tom or alone, as it happened.  If Uncle Tom saw our exaltation, nevertheless he knew all that was between us.  For it was beauty of life that Isabel and I shared, and who cannot know between whom this secret exists, if he have eyes to see?

He knew I loved Isabel, if he had not forgotten all that moves in the blood of a man of forty-two.  He knew that she loved me—­at any rate in some quality of love.  For Isabel used this word freely in the ecstasies of her spirit, in the rapturous atmosphere of Italy.  “I love James, Uncle Tom—­not as I love you; but I really love him!  How wonderful that he should come to us.  He is like my brother, but he is something more.  He is a great friend.”  Uncle Tom would smile benignantly upon this radiant woman, whom he had married for her youthful vitality, for which he gave the happiness that comes of wealth.  Perhaps in his ageing psychology he did not know that there was passion in our hearts.  Yet I think he was a great soul, wishing Isabel to have every happiness.  I know he was my friend.  There was nothing in him of the envy of January because of my younger years, nor reproof for the Maytime sunshine that was in the heart of Isabel.

Isabel and I had been to the Vatican several times.  Uncle Tom disliked pictures; above all he dreaded the fatigue of walking and the cold of the churches and rooms where he was obliged to remove his hat.  One afternoon Isabel proposed that we go again to the Vatican; there was a face there she wished to show me.  We asked Uncle Tom to come with us; but this was one of the days when he did not feel strong enough for anything.  He was keeping to his room.  Perhaps later he would go to Canape’s.  “You two go along.  You will get on without me.”