can throw even their shams and vanities away, and
live in each other's minds. I am married to Esther. If I tell you I
won't ask you into my mind because I am married to her you'll think I am
a hero. And if I do ask you in, you'll come--for you are very brave--and
you'll see things I don't want you to see."

"You mean," said Lydia, "see that you know I am in love with you. Well,
I'm not, Jeff, not in the way people talk about. Not that way."

His quick sense of her meanings supplied what she did not say: not
Esther's way. She scorned that, with a youthful scorn, the feline
domination of Esther. If that was being in love she would have none of
it. But Jeff was not actually thinking of her. He was listening to some
voice inside himself, an interrogatory voice, an irresponsible one, not
warning him but telling him:

"You do care. You care about Lydia. That's what you're
facing--love--love of Lydia."

It was disconcerting. It was the last thing for a man held by the leg in
several ways to contemplate. And yet there it was. He had entered again
into youth and was rushing along on the river that buoys up even a leaf
for a time and feels so strong against the leaf's frail texture that
every voyaging fibre trusts it joyously. The summer air felt sweet to
him. There were wild perfumes in it and the smell of water and of earth.

"Lydia!" he said, and again he spoke her name.

"Yes," said Lydia. "What is it?"

She stood there apart from him, a slim thing, her white scarf held
tight, actually, to his quickened sense, as if she kept the veil of her
virginity wrapped about her sternly. For the moment he did not feel the
despair of his greater age, of his tawdry past or his fettered present.
He was young and the night air was as innocently sweet to him as if he
had never loved a woman and been repulsed by her and dwelt for years in
the anguish of his own recoil.

"Lydia," he said, "what if you and I should tell each other the truth?"

"We do," said Lydia simply. "I tell you the truth anyway. And you could
me. But you don't understand me quite. You think I'd die for you. Yes, I
would. But I shouldn't think twice about wanting to be happier with you.
I'm happy enough now."

A thousand thoughts rushed to his lips, to tell her she did not know how
happy they could be. But he held them back. All the sweet intimacies of
life ran before him, life here in Addington, secure, based on old
traditions, if she were his wife and they had