the small hours, and forgotten in the bright eye of day.
Sometimes they sat within the fringe of trees near where the carpet had laid, near enough to see the house—and it was a wonder if eyes from there did not see them—and laughed and talked nonsense; shamefully flattered each other, made fun of each other. He had been treated as a child and as a ruler at different times in his life, and he was treated as both at once now, but with a difference—a privileged child, humored, and when refused, refused with coaxing and a smile; an adored despot—not feared but deferred to, looked upon with eyes like a dove's for gentleness. Her gentleness was his continual amusement, and her incuriousness. She asked him at all seasons what he thought of her, sometimes what he thought of himself, sometimes of this or that person. But never of what he had done, of what life had been to him before he met her, or of any person who might have been in it, never troubled him with those questions of the past and the future with which human beings are wont to disturb the present. She had love, she held it and increased it. Sometimes, whether alone or with the other people around them, their eyes met, and he felt the knife of extreme happiness that is close to suffering. He thought it was because she was beautiful; not beau-
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