“But I do want to, Philip.  You’ve been so good to me.”

“Well, it won’t hurt for waiting.  When you’re all right again we’ll go for our little honeymoon.”

“You are naughty,” she said, smiling.

Mildred expected to be confined early in March, and as soon as she was well enough she was to go to the seaside for a fortnight:  that would give Philip a chance to work without interruption for his examination; after that came the Easter holidays, and they had arranged to go to Paris together.  Philip talked endlessly of the things they would do.  Paris was delightful then.  They would take a room in a little hotel he knew in the Latin Quarter, and they would eat in all sorts of charming little restaurants; they would go to the play, and he would take her to music halls.  It would amuse her to meet his friends.  He had talked to her about Cronshaw, she would see him; and there was Lawson, he had gone to Paris for a couple of months; and they would go to the Bal Bullier; there were excursions; they would make trips to Versailles, Chartres, Fontainebleau.

“It’ll cost a lot of money,” she said.

“Oh, damn the expense.  Think how I’ve been looking forward to it.  Don’t you know what it means to me?  I’ve never loved anyone but you.  I never shall.”

She listened to his enthusiasm with smiling eyes.  He thought he saw in them a new tenderness, and he was grateful to her.  She was much gentler than she used to be.  There was in her no longer the superciliousness which had irritated him.  She was so accustomed to him now that she took no pains to keep up before him any pretences.  She no longer troubled to do her hair with the old elaboration, but just tied it in a knot; and she left off the vast fringe which she generally wore:  the more careless style suited her.  Her face was so thin that it made her eyes seem very large; there were heavy lines under them, and the pallor of her cheeks made their colour more profound.  She had a wistful look which was infinitely pathetic.  There seemed to Philip to be in her something of the Madonna.  He wished they could continue in that same way always.  He was happier than he had ever been in his life.

He used to leave her at ten o’clock every night, for she liked to go to bed early, and he was obliged to put in another couple of hours’ work to make up for the lost evening.  He generally brushed her hair for her before he went.  He had made a ritual of the kisses he gave her when he bade her good-night; first he kissed the palms of her hands (how thin the fingers were, the nails were beautiful, for she spent much time in manicuring them,) then he kissed her closed eyes, first the right one and then the left, and at last he kissed her lips.  He went home with a heart overflowing with love.  He longed for an opportunity to gratify the desire for self-sacrifice which consumed him.

Presently the time came for her to move to the nursing-home where she was to be confined.  Philip was then able to visit her only in the afternoons.  Mildred changed her story and represented herself as the wife of a soldier who had gone to India to join his regiment, and Philip was introduced to the mistress of the establishment as her brother-in-law.