ring to
some deep-seated need of veneration. She was his, he had chosen her,
she had taken her place in the long line of Lansing women who had been
loved, honoured, and probably deceived, by bygone Lansing men. He didn't
pretend to understand the logic of it; but the fact that she was his
wife gave purpose and continuity to his scattered impulses, and a
mysterious glow of consecration to his task.

Once or twice, in the first days of his marriage, he had asked himself
with a slight shiver what would happen if Susy should begin to bore
him. The thing had happened to him with other women as to whom his first
emotions had not differed in intensity from those she inspired. The part
he had played in his previous love-affairs might indeed have been summed
up in the memorable line: "I am the hunter and the prey," for he had
invariably ceased to be the first only to regard himself as the second.
This experience had never ceased to cause him the liveliest pain, since
his sympathy for his pursuer was only less keen than his commiseration
for himself; but as he was always a little sorrier for himself, he had
always ended by distancing the pursuer.

All these pre-natal experiences now seemed utterly inapplicable to the
new man he had become. He could not imagine being bored by Susy--or
trying to escape from her if he were. He could not think of her as
an enemy, or even as an accomplice, since accomplices are potential
enemies: she was some one with whom, by some unheard-of miracle, joys
above the joys of friendship were to be tasted, but who, even through
these fleeting ecstasies, remained simply and securely his friend.

These new feelings did not affect his general attitude toward life: they
merely confirmed his faith in its ultimate "jolliness." Never had he
more thoroughly enjoyed the things he had always enjoyed. A good dinner
had never been as good to him, a beautiful sunset as beautiful; he still
rejoiced in the fact that he appreciated both with an equal acuity. He
was as proud as ever of Susy's cleverness and freedom from prejudice:
she couldn't be too "modern" for him now that she was his. He shared to
the full her passionate enjoyment of the present, and all her feverish
eagerness to make it last. He knew when she was thinking of ways of
extending their golden opportunity, and he secretly thought with her,
wondering what new means they could devise. He was thankful that Ellie
Vanderlyn was still absent, and began to ho