he was now aware that her peace of soul was
gone into his keeping where it would have no rest again.

After that her true pain began. Sometimes on looking back she wondered
how she could have lived through it so often--for of course it was not
always at the same pitch. No pain or love or appreciation ever can be.
There were whole months when she managed to do very well without him,
when he was abroad and she too, perhaps, went on the Continent to some
other far-off place and found things in which to interest herself. She
belonged to the semi-artistic circle in which alone it was possible in
those days to have any liberty of action, and she had the artist's keen
appreciation of the externals of life; and when the personal failed her
there were always things. But when the pain was at its worst things
failed her.

Bad times when a letter from him, written because he happened to be in
the mood to write and wanted an answer which, though she knew his mood
would have passed by the time he received it, yet she would not be able
to prevent herself writing.... Times after he had been to see her,
either on a flying visit, or to be near her for several days, taking her
about and spoiling her delightfully.... After they were over came a
bitterness that would make her moan out loud to herself, "It isn't worth
it ... it isn't worth it...." And she would welcome the next few days
when they came as thirstily as she had the last.

Only the fact that she had a naturally strong will, made stronger by
youthful years of self-repression, and that he never wished from a woman
what she did not want to give, kept her so long not his lover in body as
she was in heart and mind. Looking back, she marvelled at the length of
time she had withstood her own heart. Not her senses; they had not
entered into the affair for her at that time. She actually loved him too
well, and was too unawakened physically, to feel the promptings of the
pulses. She felt in him, for him, by him, so intensely it sometimes
seemed to her she must be fused with him. She could have burned away
into his being and ceased to have a separate existence if the passionate
fusing of the mind could have accomplished it.

For three years she loved and suffered. She saw him always several times
a year, was with him during those times, and he never lied to her about
what he felt. He never told her she was the "only woman in the world for
him" and that he could not live without her. He