He kept clear always of the actual words and forms of love-making.  He was very fastidious and hated anything that went to vulgarise his relationships, and would not spoil his genuine affection and intimacy and passion for her or any other woman for whom he felt them by using shibboleths that did not express what he really meant.

He took her away up to a quiet mountain country in Wales, and all the weeks he looked after her there never showed any more passion than the kisses and close embraces she was now used to, and those not often.  He was not only not ever an inconsiderate lover, but he was too much of an epicure to take too much or too often even when he could.  He left her once or twice in those weeks to go to town, and she knew be saw other women there, and the knowledge meant very little to her.  Already she was loving him more deeply than she knew and understanding him more deeply still, and she knew jealousy would be the end of everything.  If she had begun to be jealous, it would have been so deadly, she would have had so much to be jealous of, that she never dared let herself indulge in it.

She had her reward when he once told her she was the only woman who had never once asked him where he had been or whom he had been with.  She was so happy in the pain this self-repression gave her she hardly thought how much happier she could have been had there been no need for it.  If that had been the case he would have been entirely different from what he was, and then perhaps she would not have loved him at all.

The time in Wales was not spoilt by anything that made her unable to face her own mind; never did his arms or lips encroach; she came back still feeling she belonged to herself—­still clinging to that physical possession of self because she was now aware that her peace of soul was gone into his keeping where it would have no rest again.

After that her true pain began.  Sometimes on looking back she wondered how she could have lived through it so often—­for of course it was not always at the same pitch.  No pain or love or appreciation ever can be.  There were whole months when she managed to do very well without him, when he was abroad and she too, perhaps, went on the Continent to some other far-off place and found things in which to interest herself.  She belonged to the semi-artistic circle in which alone it was possible in those days to have any liberty of action, and she had the artist’s keen appreciation of the externals of life; and when the personal failed her there were always things.  But when the pain was at its worst things failed her.

Bad times when a letter from him, written because he happened to be in the mood to write and wanted an answer which, though she knew his mood would have passed by the time he received it, yet she would not be able to prevent herself writing....  Times after he had been to see her, either on a flying visit, or to be near her for several days, taking her about and spoiling her delightfully....  After they were over came a bitterness that would make her moan out loud to herself, “It isn’t worth it ... it isn’t worth it....”  And she would welcome the next few days when they came as thirstily as she had the last.