d be
hers, which he had always longed to give her. He felt strong enough to
face any contingency: it seemed, indeed, as if his love for her had all
along been aiming at this issue; as if each of the unhappy hours he had
spent, since first meeting her, was made up for by the words: "You are
my friend."

A deep sense of responsibility filled him. In obedience, however, to a
puritanic streak in his nature, he hedged himself round with
restrictions, lest he should believe he was setting out on all too
primrose a path. He erected limiting boundaries, which were not to be
overstepped. For example, on the two days that followed the memorable
Christmas Eve, he only made inquiries at the door after Louise, and
when he learned that the cold she had caught was better, did not
return. For, on one point, his mind was made up: idle tongues should
have no fresh cause for gossip.

At the expiry of a fortnight, however, he began to fear that if he
remained away any longer, she would think him indifferent to her offer
of friendship. So, late one afternoon, he called to see her. But when
he was face to face with her, he doubted whether she had given him a
thought in the interval: she seemed mildly surprised at his coming. It
was even possible that she had forgotten, by now, what she had said to
him; and he sought anew for a means of impressing himself on her
consciousness.

She was crouched in the rocking-chair, close beside the stove, and was
wrapped in a thick woollen shawl; but the hand she gave him was as cold
as stone. She was trying to keep warm, she said; she had not been
properly warm since the night on the ice.

"But there's an easy remedy for that," said Maurice, who came in ruddy
from the sharp air. "You must go out and walk. Then you will soon get
warm."

But she shuddered at the suggestion, and also made an expressive
gesture to indicate the general laxity of her dress--the soiled
dressing-gown, her untidy hair. Then she leaned forward again, holding
both hands, palms out, to the mica pane in the door of the stove,
through which the red coals glowed.

"If only winter were over!"

He gazed at the expressive lines of hand and wrist, and was reminded of
an adoring Madonna he had somewhere seen engraved: her hands were held
back in the same way; the thumbs slightly thrown out, the three long
fingers together, the little one apart: here as there, was the same
supple, passionate indolence. But he could find no more to say