It did indeed soon dawn upon Howard that there was a change in Maud, that their relations had somehow altered and deepened. The little barrier of age, for one thing, which he had sometimes felt, seemed obliterated. There had been in Howard's mind a sense that he had known a number of hard facts and ugly features about life, had been aware of mean, combative, fierce, cruel elements which were hidden from Maud. Now this all seemed to be purged away; if these things were there, they were not worth knowing, except to be disregarded. They were base material knowledge which one must not even recognise; they were not real forces at all, only ugly, stubborn obstacles, through which life must pass, like water flowing among rocks; they were not life, only the channel of life, through which one passed to something more free and generous. He began to perceive that such things mattered nothing at all to Maud; that her life would have been just as fine in quality if she had lived in the smallest cottage among the most sordid cares. He saw that she possessed the wisdom which he had missed, because she lived in and for emotion and affection, and that all material things existed only to enshrine and subserve emotion.
Their life seemed to take on a new colour and intensity. They talked less; up till now it had been a perpetual delight to Howard to elicit Maud's thoughts and fancies about a thousand things, about books, people, ideas. Her prejudices, ignorances, enthusiasms half charmed, half amused him. But now they could sit or walk silent together in an even more tranquil happiness; nearness was enough, and thought seemed to pass between them without need of speech. Howard began to resume his work; it was enough that Maud should sit by, reading, working, writing. A glance would pass between them and suffice.
One day Howard laid down his pen, and looking up, having finished a chapter, saw that Maud's eyes were fixed upon him with an anxious intentness. She was sitting in a low chair near the fire, and an open book lay disregarded on her knee. He went across to her and sat down on a low chair beside her, taking her hand in his.
"What is it, dear child?" he said. "Am I very selfish and stupid to sit here without a word like this?"
Maud put her lips to his hand, and laughed a contented laugh. "Oh no, no," she said; "I like to see you hard at work—there seems no need to say anything—it's just you and me!"
"Well," said Howard, "you must just tell me what you were thinking—you had travelled a long way beyond that."
"Not out of your reach," said Maud; "I was just thinking how different men and women were, and how I liked you to be different. I was remembering how awfully mysterious you were at first—so full to the brim of strange things which I could not fathom. I always seemed to be dislodging something I had never thought of. I used to wonder how you could find time, in the middle of it all, to care about me: you were always giving me something. But now it has all grown so much simpler and more wonderful too. It's like what you said about Cambridge long ago, the dark secret doorways, the hidden gardens; I see now that all those ideas and thoughts are only things you are carrying with you, like luggage. They are not part of you at all. Don't you know how, when one is quite a child, a person's house seems to be all a mysterious part of himself? One thinks he has chosen and arranged it all, knows where everything is and what it means—everything seems to be a sort of deliberate expression of his tastes and ideas—and, then one gets older, and finds out that people don't know what is in their houses at all—there are rooms into which they never go; and then one finds that they don't even see the things in their own rooms, have forgotten how they came there, wouldn't know if they were taken away. My, I used to feel as if the scents and smells of houses were all arranged and chosen by their owners. It's like that with you; all the things you know and remember, the words you speak, are not YOU at all; I see and feel you now apart from all that."
"I am afraid I have lost what novelists call my glamour," said Howard. "You have found me out, the poor, shivering, timid thing that sits like a wizard in the middle of his properties, only hoping that the stuffed crocodile and the skeleton will frighten his visitors."
Maud laughed. "Well, I am not frightened any more," she said. "I doubt if you could frighten me if you tried. I wonder how I should feel if I saw you angry or chilly. Are you ever angry, I wonder?"
"I think some of my pupils would say that I could be very disagreeable," said Howard. "I don't think that I was ever very fierce, but I have realised that I was on occasions very unpleasant."