He was happy, in a dazed way; he could not appraise the extent of his happiness all at once. Its chief outward sign was the nervous flood of talk that poured from his lips—as though they had been sealed and stopped for years. But Louise urged him on; what he had first felt dimly, he soon knew for certain: that she was never tired of learning how much he loved her, how he had hoped, and ventured, and despaired, and how he had been prepared to lose her, up to the very last day. She also made him describe to her more than once how he had first seen her: his indelible impression of her as she played; her appearance at his side in the concert-hall; how he had followed her out and looked for her, and had vainly tried to learn who she was.
"I stood quite close to you, you say, Maurice? Perhaps I even looked at you. How strange things are!"
Still, the interest she displayed was of a wholly passive kind; she took no part herself in this building up of the past. She left it to him, just as she left all that called for firmness or decision, in this new phase of her life. The chief step taken, it seemed as if no further initiative were left in her; she let herself be loved, waited for everything to come from him, was without will or wish. He had to ask no self-assertion of her now, no impulsive resolutions. Over all she did, lay a subtle languor; and her abandon was absolute—he heard it in the very way she said his name.
In the first riotous joy of possession, Maurice had been conscious of the change in her as of something inexpressibly sweet and tender, implying a boundless faith in him. But, before long, it made him uneasy. He had imagined several things as likely to happen; had imagined her the cooler and wiser of the two, checking him and chiding him for his over-devotion; had imagined even moments of self-reproach, on her part, when she came to think over what she had done. What he had not imagined was the wordless, unthinking fashion in which she gave herself into his hands. The very expression of her face altered in these days: the somewhat defiant, bitter lines he had so loved in it, and behind which she had screened herself, were smoothed out; the lips seemed to meet differently, were sweeter, even tremulous; the eyes were more veiled, far less sure of themselves. He did not admit to himself how difficult she made things for him. Strengthened, from the first, by his good resolutions, he was determined not to let himself be carried off his feet. But it would have been easier for him to stand firm, had she met him in almost any other way than this—even with a frank return of feeling, for then they might have spoken openly, and have helped each other. As it was, he had no thoughts but of her; his watchful tenderness knew no bounds; but the whole responsibility was his. It was he who had to maintain the happy mean in their relations; he to draw the line beyond which it was better for all their after-lives that they should not go. He affirmed to himself more than once that he loved her the more for her complete subjection: it was in keeping with her openhanded nature which could do nothing by halves. Yet, as time passed, he began to suffer under it, to feel her absence of will as a disquieting factor—to find anything to which he could compare it, he had to hark back to the state she had been in when he first offered her aid and comfort. That was the lassitude of grief, this of ... he could not find a word. But it began to tell on him, and more than once made him a little sharp with her; for, at moments, he would be seized by an overpowering temptation to shake her out of her lassitude, to rouse her as he very well knew she could be roused. And then, strange desires awoke in him; he did not himself know of what he was capable.
One afternoon, they were in the woods as usual. It was very sultry; not a leaf stirred. Louise lay with her elbow on the moss-grown roots of a tree; her eyes were heavy. Maurice, before her, smoked a cigarette, and watched for the least recognition of his presence, thinking, meanwhile, that she looked better already for these days spent out-of-doors—the tiny lines round her eyes were fast disappearing. By degrees, however, he grew restless under her protracted silence; there was something ominous about it. He threw his cigarette away, and, taking her hand, began to pull apart the long fingers with the small, pink nails, or to gather them together, and let them drop, one by one, like warm, but lifeless things.
"What ARE you thinking of?" he asked at last, and shut her hand firmly within his.
She started. "I? ... thinking? I don't know. I wasn't thinking at all."
"But you were. I saw it in your face. Your thoughts were miles away."
"I don't know, Maurice. I couldn't tell you now." And a moment later, she added: "You think one must always be thinking, when one is silent."
"Yes, I'm jealous of your thoughts. You tell me nothing of them. But now you have come back to me, and it's all right."