ll take my beautiful
mind back to Cambridge, I will go on moulding character, I will go on
suggesting high motives. But the responsibility is yours, and if you
turn me into a prig, it will not be my fault."

"Ah, I will take the responsibility for that," said Maud, "and, by the
way, hadn't we better begin to look out for a house? I can't live in
College, I believe, not even if I were to become a bedmaker?"

"Yes," said Howard, "a high-minded house of roughcast and tile, with
plenty of white paint inside, Chippendale chairs, Watts engravings. I
have come to that--it's inevitable, it just expresses the situation;
but I mustn't go on like this--it isn't funny, this academic
irony--it's dreadfully professional. I will be sensible, and write to
an agent for a list. It had better just be 'a house' with nothing
distinctive; because this will be our home, I hope, and that the
official residence. And now, Maud, I won't be tiresome any more; we
can't waste time in talking about these things. I haven't done with
making love to you yet, and I doubt if I ever shall!"

XXXIII

ANXIETY

The months moved slowly on, a time full of deepening strain and anxiety
to Howard. Maud herself seemed serene enough at first, full of hope;
she began to be more dependent on him; and Howard perceived two things
which gave him some solace; in the first place he found that, sharp as
the tension of anxiety in his mind often was, he did not realise it as
a burden of which he would be merely glad to be rid. He had an
instinctive dislike of all painful straining things--of
responsibilities, disagreeable duties, things that disturbed his
tranquillity; but this anxiety did not come to him in that light at
all; he longed that it should be over, but it was not a thing which he
desired to banish from his mind; it was all bound up with love and
happy anticipation; and next he learned the joy of doing things that
would otherwise be troublesome for the sake of love, and found them all
transmuted, not into seemly courtesies, but into sharp and urgent
pleasures. To be of use to Maud, to entertain her, to disguise his
anxieties, to compel himself to talk easily and lightly--all this
filled his soul with delight, especially when he found as the months
went on that Maud began to look to him as a matter of course; and
though Howard had been used to say that being read aloud to was the
only occupation in the world that was worse than reading aloud, he
found