never mentioned other
women to her, except such of his friends as she had met and of those she
never knew, except in so far as her own intuition told her, which were
only friends, which mingled the give and take of passion with the cooler
draught. On the other hand, he never hid his passion when he felt it for
her, and he always showed his affection and care of her when in the
pleasant spaces between passion. He could not but know she was aware
that he would be glad if one day she gave him more; meanwhile he did not
make her hate herself and him with actions that would have excited
without satisfying. He was the perfect companion, or would have been if
she had not loved him.

For three years she never told him that she did; she met his kisses only
with frank affection, and though she felt no urge of passion in herself
to teach her lips, yet she began to feel that which would have made her
more the eager one, and less the kissed, as she always sternly kept
herself. For these three years she did not imagine he lived a chaste
existence; there was no reason, with his pagan and quite genuine
convictions, why he should. Fidelity in so far as it meant keeping to
one person was to him foolishness. In so far as it meant loyalty of
affection and absolute honesty he was faithful to everyone.

At the end of the three years she had become aware that things were
different ... at first she could not say how. Then she slowly saw that
unless she gave more, made herself more to him, she would become less.

He made no demands on her; he would have resented the idea of possessing
a woman as much as that of any woman possessing him--freedom to him was
the salt of every dish. Judy told him sometimes that he made the
marriage service of too great importance, just as much as did the
advocates of it, though in a different way. They thought there ought to
be no love outside it; he thought there could be none within-it. To her
mind, which always went for the essentials and left the trappings alone,
the actual legal compact would not have mattered either way. That was
what her instinct, which in her was as nicely balanced as reason, told
her. But there was a side of her, as was inevitable, which was the child
of her period and upbringing, and that side had never been talked over
by Killigrew's philosophy, with the result that when she gave him
everything she suffered in her conscience as well as in her heart. She
had suffered ever since. Truth w