world might serve her; a
foolish love-affair, perhaps, that he would disentangle; or a disaster
connected with the great woman under whose protection she lived; he
could so easily imagine disasters befalling Madame von Marwitz and
involving everyone around her. And now in a week's time he would be in
Cornwall and seeing again the little Hans Andersen heroine. This was the
thought that emerged from the sweet vagrancy of his mood; and, as it
came, he was pierced suddenly with a strange rapture and fear that had
in it the very essence of the spring-time.

Gregory had continued to think of the girl he was to marry in the guise
of a Constance Armytage, and although Constance Armytage's engagement to
another man found him unmoved, except with relief for the solution of
what had really ceased to be a perplexity--since, apparently, he could
not manage to fall in love with her--this fact had not been revealing,
since he still continued to think of Constance as the type, if she had
ceased to be the person. Karen Woodruff was almost the last type he
could have fixed upon. She fitted nowhere into his actual life. She only
fitted into the life of dreams and memories.

So now, still looking down at the trees and daffodils, he drew a long
breath and tried to smile over what had been a trick of the imagination
and to relegate Karen to the place of half-humorous dreams. He tried to
think calmly of her. He visualized her in her oddity and child-likeness;
seeing the flat blue bows of the concert; the old-fashioned gold locket
of the tea; the sealskin cap of the station. But still, it was apparent,
the infection of the season was working in him; for these trivial bits
of her personality had become overwhelmingly sweet and wonderful. The
essential Karen infused them. Her limpid grey eyes looked into his. She
said, so ridiculously, so adorably: "My guardian likes best to be called
von Marwitz by those who know her personally." She laughed, the tip of
her tongue caught between her teeth. From the place of dream and memory,
the living longing for her actual self emerged indomitably.

Gregory turned from the balcony and went inside. He was dazed. Her
primroses stood about the room in the white and blue bowls. He wanted to
kiss them. Controlling the impulse, which seemed to him almost insane,
he looked at them instead and argued with himself. In love? But one
didn't fall in love like that between shaving and breakfast. What
possessed him was