rd.

He quaked at his own oddness, until there struck home to his heart, as
an immense reassurance, the expression on Ellen's face. It had been
blank with the joy of being loved, a romantic mask, lit steadily with a
severe receptive passion; but the abstraction in his voice and an
accompanying failure of invention in his compliments had not escaped
unnoticed by her, and there was playing about her dear obstinate mouth
and fierce-coloured eyebrows the most delicious look of shrewdness, as
if she had his secret by the coat-tail and would deliver it up to
justice; and over all there was the sweetest, most playful smile, which
showed that she would make a jest of his negligence, that she was one of
those who exclude ugliness from their lives by imposing beautiful
interpretations on all that happened to her; and behind these lovely
things she did shone the still lovelier thing she was. It struck home to
him the immense degree to which brooding on so perfect and adventurous a
thing would change him, and once more he was not afraid. Taking her
again in his arms, he cried out: "Ellen! Ellen! You mean so much to me!
I love you as a child loves its mother, partly for real, disinterested
love and partly for the thing you give me! You are going to do such a
lot for me! You will put an end to this damned misery! And just the
sight of you about my home, you slip of light, you dear miracle!"

She put her hand across his mouth, blushing at the familiarity of her
gesture yet urgently impelled to it. "That'll do," she said. "I know you
think I'm nice. But what were you saying about being miserable? You're
not miserable, are you?"

"Sometimes. I have been lately."

"You miserable!" she softly exclaimed. "You so big and strong--and
victorious! But why?"

"Oh, no reason. It's a mood that comes on me."

"I have them myself. It's proof of our superior delicacy of
organisation," she gravely told him.

"Oh, I don't know. The feeling that comes on you when you've taken
particular care to turn up for an important appointment, and you get to
the place ten minutes before the time, and find there's nobody there,
and wait about, and suddenly find you've come a day late. And still you
go on hanging round, feeling there must be something you can do,
although you know you can't. It stays months sometimes. A sense of
having missed some opportunity that won't come again. I don't know what
it means. But it turns life sour. It seems to take the powe