n her
hair, that it was time for soap and water to combat natural greasiness.
She made no attempt to keep up the illusion which, even while it is
admitted to be such, yet achieves its object. She would have thought it
silly. But when it came to the rites of love she was inspired and could
not make a false move. A thousand little ways of her own, cat-like rubs
of her sleek head, turns of her limbs, inspirations of withheld kisses
and in the same breath approaches that held an eternally child-like
quality in their submission--there was no faint tone of the age-old
gamut to which she did not give its keenest value.

The month spent at the genteel resort of Torquay was to Ishmael a
fevered medley. His days were full of distaste--at her predilections for
the young clerks who eyed her on the sea-front, for cheap jewellery and
casual friends picked up at the hotel, at the bland superficiality of
her mind; and now and again this distaste was shot through with moments
of acute fears when he realised, startled to it by some blunt display of
the ugly things of life, that to this he must accustom himself for the
rest of his days; and that he would grow only too deadly accustomed, to
the stifling of other ideals, he foresaw. These were his days, yet he
felt remorseful at his own spirit of criticism, because she thought him
so god-like, and in many little womanly ways showed an unselfish
consideration that humbled him in his own eyes and exalted her. Of the
nights, even when there was no passion between them, she made such a
delight with her childish clinging, her soft nestling against him, that
he would hold his breath to listen to her quiet breathing and move a
little away as though in sleep, so as to feel her kitten-like,
half-unconscious wriggle into the curve of his arm again. It was sweet
at such times to feel such utter dependence upon him as the protective
male, and the best in him was stirred to response. The next morning she
might jar again from the hour of getting up in their ugly hotel room,
through the expedition with which they would try and beguile the day, to
the dinner, at which her conversation was always most noticeably
trifling; but he always, to her surprise, let her go to bed alone, and
came up much later to find the old magic upon her once more like dew.

It was late autumn when they went back to Cloom, and under John-James'
watchful care the harvest was all in; he awaited them at the station in
the smart new