joins us. Don't you see? Before . . . But now it's different. It's something we have between us. It's something that . . . It's the link we needed. It will hold us together, cement us together. It will be our life. This will be my work now. The other . . ."
He faced a truth. "It was just . . . vanity!"
There was still a shade of doubt in her face, a wistfulness.
Presently she spoke.
"Dear," she said.
"Yes?"
She knitted her brows. "No!" she said. "I can't say it."
In the interval she came into a sitting position on his knees.
He kissed her hand, but her face remained grave, and she looked out upon the twilight. "I know I'm stupid," she said. "The things I say . . . aren't the things I feel."
He waited for her to say more.
"It's no good," she said.
He felt the onus of expression lay on him. He too found it a little difficult to put into words. "I think I understand," he said, and wrestled with the impalpable. The pause seemed long and yet not altogether vacant. She lapsed abruptly into the prosaic. She started from him.
