not really
love her at that moment; nor did she relent as easily as usual. It was
not until we were together in our sitting-room, a few hours later, that
she gave in. I felt a tremendous sense of relief.

"Hugh, I'll try to be what you want. You know I am trying. But don't
kill what is natural in me."

I was touched by the appeal, and repentant...

It is impossible to say when the little worries, annoyances and
disagreements began, when I first felt a restlessness creeping over me.
I tried to hide these moods from her, but always she divined them. And
yet I was sure that I loved Maude; in a surprisingly short period I had
become accustomed to her, dependent on her ministrations and the normal,
cosy intimacy of our companionship. I did not like to think that the
keen edge of the enjoyment of possession was wearing a little, while
at the same time I philosophized that the divine fire, when legalized,
settles down to a comfortable glow. The desire to go home that grew upon
me I attributed to the irritation aroused by the spectacle of a fixed
social order commanding such unquestioned deference from the many who
were content to remain resignedly outside of it. Before the setting
in of the Liberal movement and the "American invasion" England was a
country in which (from my point of view) one must be "somebody" in order
to be happy. I was "somebody" at home; or at least rapidly becoming
so....

London was shrouded, parliament had risen, and the great houses
were closed. Day after day we issued forth from a musty and highly
respectable hotel near Piccadilly to a gloomy Tower, a soggy Hampton
Court or a mournful British Museum. Our native longing for luxury--or
rather my native longing--impelled me to abandon Smith's Hotel for a
huge hostelry where our suite overlooked the Thames, where we ran across
a man I had known slightly at Harvard, and other Americans with whom
we made excursions and dined and went to the theatre. Maude liked these
persons; I did not find them especially congenial. My life-long habit
of unwillingness to accept what life sent in its ordinary course was
asserting itself; but Maude took her friends as she found them, and I
was secretly annoyed by her lack of discrimination. In addition to this,
the sense of having been pulled up by the roots grew upon me.

"Suppose," Maude surprised me by suggesting one morning as we sat
at breakfast watching the river craft flit like phantoms through the
yellow-green