him as virtue evades other men.  Never had he been able to look on women with the single eye of desire; always in the middle of his lust, like the dark stamen in a bright flower, there appeared his inveterate concern for people’s souls.  Every woman to whom he wanted to make love was certain to be engaged in some defensive struggle against fate, for that is the condition of strong personality, and his quick sense would soon detect its nature; and since there is nothing more lovable than the sight of a soul standing up against fate, looking so little under the dome of the indifferent sky, he would find himself nearly in love.  And because that meant, as he had observed, this magic change of the self, he would turn his back on the adventure, for all his life he had disliked profound emotional processes with exactly the same revulsion that a decent man feels for some operation which, though within the law, is outside the dictates of honesty.  He knew there was no reason that could be formulated why he should not become a real lover; but nevertheless he had always felt as if for him it would be an act of disloyalty to some fair standard.

He quaked at his own oddness, until there struck home to his heart, as an immense reassurance, the expression on Ellen’s face.  It had been blank with the joy of being loved, a romantic mask, lit steadily with a severe receptive passion; but the abstraction in his voice and an accompanying failure of invention in his compliments had not escaped unnoticed by her, and there was playing about her dear obstinate mouth and fierce-coloured eyebrows the most delicious look of shrewdness, as if she had his secret by the coat-tail and would deliver it up to justice; and over all there was the sweetest, most playful smile, which showed that she would make a jest of his negligence, that she was one of those who exclude ugliness from their lives by imposing beautiful interpretations on all that happened to her; and behind these lovely things she did shone the still lovelier thing she was.  It struck home to him the immense degree to which brooding on so perfect and adventurous a thing would change him, and once more he was not afraid.  Taking her again in his arms, he cried out:  “Ellen!  Ellen!  You mean so much to me!  I love you as a child loves its mother, partly for real, disinterested love and partly for the thing you give me!  You are going to do such a lot for me!  You will put an end to this damned misery!  And just the sight of you about my home, you slip of light, you dear miracle!”

She put her hand across his mouth, blushing at the familiarity of her gesture yet urgently impelled to it.  “That’ll do,” she said.  “I know you think I’m nice.  But what were you saying about being miserable?  You’re not miserable, are you?”

“Sometimes.  I have been lately.”

“You miserable!” she softly exclaimed.  “You so big and strong—­and victorious!  But why?”

“Oh, no reason.  It’s a mood that comes on me.”