her eyes were
wide open, immovable. He had never known anyone surrender himself so
utterly to the mimic life of the theatre. Under the influence of music
or acting that gripped her, Louise lost all remembrance of her
surroundings: she lived blindly into this unreal world, without the
least attempt at criticism. Afterwards, she returned to herself tired
and dispirited, and with a marked distaste for the dullness of real
life. Here, since the first lively clash of the orchestra, since the
curtain rose on gay Sevilla, she had been as far away from him as if
she were on another planet. Not, he was obliged to confess to himself,
that it made very much difference. Though he was now her constant
companion, though his love for her was stronger than it had ever been,
he knew less of her to-day than he had known six months ago, when one
all-pervading emotion had made her life an open book.

Since that unhappy afternoon on which he learnt the contents of the
letter from Dresden, they had spent a part of nearly every day in each
other's company. Louise had borne him no malice for what he had said to
her; indeed, with the generous forgetfulness of offence, which was one
of the most astonishing traits in her character, she met him, the day
after, as though nothing had passed between them. By common consent,
they never referred to the matter again; Maurice did not know to this
day, whether or how she had answered the letter. For, although she had
forgiven him, she was not quite the same with him as before; a faint
change had come over their relation to each other. It was something so
elusive that he could not have defined it; yet nevertheless it existed,
and he was often acutely conscious of it. It was not that she kept her
thoughts to herself; but she did not say ALL she thought--that was it.
And this shade of reserve, in her who had been so frank, ate into him
sorely. He accepted it, though, as a chastisement, for he had been in a
very contrite frame of mind on awakening to the knowledge that he had
all but lost her. And so the days had slipped away. An outsider had
first to open his eyes to the fact that it was impossible for things to
go on any longer as they were doing; that, for her sake, he must make
an end, and quickly.

And yet it had been so easy to drift, so hard to do otherwise, when
Louise accepted all he did for her as a matter of course, in that
high-handed way of hers which took no account of details. He felt sorry
f