eyes, a wave in his fair
hair, a wonderful tenor voice and--she could not help it, she tried to
look away and not think of it--a broad chest. With him she intended to
climb mountains. So clearly she could not marry Mr. Harman. And because
of that she tried to be very kind indeed to him, and when he faltered
that she could not possibly care for him, she reassured him so vaguely
as to fill him with wild gusts of hope and herself with a sense of
pledges. He told her one day between two sets of tennis--which he played
with a certain tricky skill--that he felt that the very highest
happiness he could ever attain would be to die at her feet. Presently
her pity and her sense of responsibility had become so large and deep
that the dream hero with the blue eyes was largely overlaid and hidden
by them.

Then, at first a little indirectly and then urgently and with a voice
upon the edge of tears, Harman implored her to marry him. She had never
before in the whole course of her life seen a grown-up person on the
very verge of tears. She felt that the release of such deep fountains as
that must be averted at any cost. She felt that for a mere schoolgirl
like herself, a backward schoolgirl who had never really mastered
quadratics, to cause these immense and tragic distresses was abominable.
She was sure her former headmistress would disapprove very highly of
her. "I will make you a queen," said Harman, "I will give all my life to
your happiness."

She believed he would.

She refused him for the second time but with a weakening certainty in a
little white summer-house that gave a glimpse of the sea between green
and wooded hills. She sat and stared at the sea after he had left her,
through a mist of tears; so pitiful did he seem. He had beaten his poor
fists on the stone table and then caught up her hand, kissed it and
rushed out.... She had not dreamt that love could hurt like that.

And all that night--that is to say for a full hour before her wet
eyelashes closed in slumber--she was sleepless with remorse for the
misery she was causing him.

The third time when he said with suicidal conviction that he could not
live without her, she burst into tears of pity and yielded. And
instantly, amazingly, with the famished swiftness of a springing panther
he caught her body into his arms and kissed her on the lips....

Sec.4

They were married with every circumstance of splendour, with very
expensive music, and portraits in the il