They had parted, positively, as if, on either side, primed
with it--primed for whatever was to be; and everything between them, as
the month waned, added its touch of truth to this similitude. Nothing,
truly, WAS at present between them save that they were looking at each
other in infinite trust; it fairly wanted no more words, and when they
met, during the deep summer days, met even without witnesses, when
they kissed at morning and evening, or on any of the other occasions of
contact that they had always so freely celebrated, a pair of birds of
the upper air could scarce have appeared less to invite each other to
sit down and worry afresh. So it was that in the house itself, where
more of his waiting treasures than ever were provisionally ranged, she
sometimes only looked at him--from end to end of the great gallery,
the pride of the house, for instance--as if, in one of the halls of a
museum, she had been an earnest young woman with a Baedeker and he a
vague gentleman to whom even Baedekers were unknown. He had ever, of
course, had his way of walking about to review his possessions and
verify their condition; but this was a pastime to which he now struck
her as almost extravagantly addicted, and when she passed near him and
he turned to give her a smile she caught--or so she fancied--the greater
depth of his small, perpetual hum of contemplation. It was as if he
were singing to himself, sotto voce, as he went--and it was also,
on occasion, quite ineffably, as if Charlotte, hovering, watching,
listening, on her side too, kept sufficiently within earshot to make it
out as song, and yet, for some reason connected with the very manner of
it, stood off and didn't dare.

One of the attentions she had from immediately after her marriage
most freely paid him was that of her interest in his rarities, her
appreciation of his taste, her native passion for beautiful objects and
her grateful desire not to miss anything he could teach her about them.
Maggie had in due course seen her begin to "work" this fortunately
natural source of sympathy for all it was worth. She took possession of
the mound throughout its extent; she abounded, to odd excess, one might
have remarked, in the assumption of its being for her, with her husband,
ALL the ground, the finest, clearest air and most breathable medium
common to them. It had been given to Maggie to wonder if she didn't, in
these intensities of approbation, too much shut him up to his pro