hen
in Rio de Janeiro. There she was happy. She was one of those Northerners
to whom the South belongs far more truly than it does to any of its
natives. For over those the sun has had power since their birth,
consuming their marrows and evaporating their blood so that they became
pithless things that have to fly indoors for half the day and leave the
Southern sun blazing insolently on the receptive Southern earth. But
with blood cooled and nerves stabilised by youth spent on the edge of
the grey sea, she could outface all foreign seasons. She could walk
across the silent plaza when its dust lay dazzling white under the
heat-pale sky and the city slept; the days of heavy rain and potent
pervasive dampness pleased her by their prodigiousness; and when the
thunderstorm planted vast momentary trees of lightning in the night she
was pleased, as if she was watching someone do easily what she had
always impotently desired to do.

And Richard was so wonderful to watch in this new setting that matched
his beauty, easily establishing his dominion over the world as he had
established it over her being from the moment of his conception. There
was a conflict raging in him which, since it never resulted in
hesitancy, but in simultaneous snatchings at life by both of the warring
forces, gave him the appearance of the calmest exultation. He loved
riding and dancing and gambling so much that his face was cruel when he
did those things, as if he would kill anybody who tried to interrupt him
in his pleasure. But he gave the core of his passion to his work and
disciplined all his days to the routine of the laboratory, so that he
was always cool and remote like a priest. It gave him pleasure to be
insolent as rich men are, but all his insolence was in the interests of
fineness and humility. He was ambitious, so fastidious about the quality
of his work that he rejected half the world's offers to him. And always
he turned aside from his victories and smiled secretively at her, as if
they were two exiles who had returned under false names to the country
that had banished them and were earning great honours. She wished this
life could go on for ever.

But one day Richard came to her as she sat in the dense sweetness of the
flowering orange grove and tossed a letter into her lap. She did not
open it for a little, but lay and looked at Richard through her lashes.
His swarthiness was burned by the sun, and his body was slim like an
Indian's in