She shook her head.
"No, I'll promise nothing any more. I should only break my promises. But I'll tell you before I'm going."
There began then for him the strangest time. Slowly an entirely new woman stole into his life, a woman whom he did not know at all, a creation as strange and novel as though he had but now met her for the first time. Every evening, when he returned to the flat, it was with the expectation of finding her gone. He questioned her about nothing. She continued as she had done before to look after the flat and his clothes and his food. He did not touch her; he did not kiss her. They sat in the evening in their little sitting-room reading. They discussed the events of the day.
Soon he realised that it was beginning to be a passionate determination with him that he must keep her. He did not know how to set about it. He found that he was beginning to woo her again, to woo her as he had never wooed anybody before. He did not let her see it. He fancied that he was the last word in tact. One evening he brought her some roses. He tried to speak casually about it. His voice trembled. One night he kissed her, but very indifferently as though he were thinking of other things.
And how mysterious she was becoming to him! Not in the old way. He could not believe that there had ever been a time when he had known her so well that he could not see her. He saw her continually now, through all his work, through every moment of the day. His heart beat when he thought of her. He would wait for a moment outside the door in the evening, his hands trembling with the thought that he might look inside and find her gone.
He never questioned her now as to where she went, but he was forced to admit that she did not go out any more than she had done in the old days. It was strange when you came to think of it, that she had not followed up more completely her fine declaration of independence.
They went one evening to a theatre, together. They sat close to one another in the dark, and he longed to take her hand, but did not dare. He felt like a boy again, and she was surely young too—younger than he had ever known her.
There were times when he fancied that after all she was quite contented with her domesticity. But he did not dare to believe that. If he once caught the golden ball and held it, what would happen?
There came at last an evening when imprudence overcame him. He caught her in his arms and kissed her—kissed her as he had not done for years. The first wonderful thing that he knew was that she responded, responded with all the passion of their first days of courtship.
He heard her murmur: