finest Spanish
aviator, a man not only of the mediaeval courage one might have guessed
from the story, but also of the most modern wit about machines....

Yaverland bit his lip suddenly. He had told the story without shame, for
he knew well and counted it among the heartening facts of life, like the
bravery of seamen and the sweetness of children, that to a man a woman's
bed may sometimes be an altar. But Mr. Philip had ducked his head and
his ears were red. Shame was entering the room like a bad smell.

For a minute Yaverland did not dare to look at Ellen. "I had forgotten
she was a girl," he thought miserably. "I thought of nothing but how
keen she is on Spain. I don't know how girls feel about things...." But
she was sitting warm and rosy in a happy dream, looking very solemnly at
a picture she was making in the darkness over his left shoulder. She had
liked the story, although the thought of men fighting over a woman made
her feel sick, as any conspicuous example of the passivity common in her
sex always did. But the rest she had thought lovely. It was a beautiful
idea of the Marquis's to turn the bed into an altar. Probably he had
often gone into his wife's room to kiss her good-night. She saw a narrow
iron bedstead such as she herself slept in, a face half hidden by the
black hair flung wide across the pillow, a body bent like a bow under
the bedclothes; for she herself still curled up at nights as dogs and
children do; and the Marquis, whom she pictured as carrying a robin's
egg blue enamelled candlestick like the one she always carried up to her
room, kneeling down and kissing his wife very gently lest she should
awake. Love must be a great compensation to those who have not political
ambitions. She became aware that Yaverland's eyes were upon her, and she
slowly smiled, reluctantly unveiling her good will to him. It again
appeared to him that the world was a place in which one could be at
one's ease without disgrace.

He stood up and brought a close to the business interview, and was
gripping Mr. Philip's hand, when a sudden recollection reddened his
face. "Ah, there's one thing," he said quite lightly, though the vein
down the middle of his forehead had darkened. "You see from those
letters that a Senor Vicente de Rojas is making an offer for the house.
He's not to have it. Do you understand? Not at any price."

The effect of this restriction, made obviously at the behest of some
deep passion, was to make