That had been his first impression, and
her subsequent demeanour had justified it. She had been,
from the outset, just the frank and easy comrade he had
expected to find her. Was it he, then, who, in the sequel,
had grown impatient of the bounds he had set himself? Was it
his wounded vanity that, seeking balm for its hurt, yearned
to dip deeper into the healing pool of her compassion? In
his confused memory of the situation he seemed not to have
been guiltless of such yearnings...Yet for the first few
days the experiment had been perfectly successful. Her
enjoyment had been unclouded and his pleasure in it
undisturbed. It was very gradually--he seemed to see--that
a shade of lassitude had crept over their intercourse.
Perhaps it was because, when her light chatter about people
failed, he found she had no other fund to draw on, or
perhaps simply because of the sweetness of her laugh, or of
the charm of the gesture with which, one day in the woods of
Marly, she had tossed off her hat and tilted back her head
at the call of a cuckoo; or because, whenever he looked at
her unexpectedly, he found that she was looking at him and
did not want him to know it; or perhaps, in varying degrees,
because of all these things, that there had come a moment
when no word seemed to fly high enough or dive deep enough
to utter the sense of well-being each gave to the other, and
the natural substitute for speech had been a kiss.
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