One night, when he came to her, he found a creature that quivered at his touch and shrank from it, fatigued, averted; a creature pitifully supine, with arms too weary to enforce their own repulse. He took her in his arms and she gave a cry, little and low, like a child's whimper. It went to his heart and struck cold there. It was incredible that Jinny should have given such a cry.
He lay awake a long time. He wondered if she had ceased to care for him. He hardly dared own how it terrified him, this slackening of the physical tie.
He got up early and dressed and went out into the garden. At six o'clock he came back into her room. She was asleep, and he sat and watched her. She lay with one arm thrown up above her pillow, as the trouble of her sleep had tossed her. Her head was bowed upon her breast.
It was Jinny who lay there, Jinny, his wife
His watching face was lowered as he brooded over the marvel and the mystery of her. It was Jinny who lay there, Jinny, his wife, whose face had been so tender to him, whose body utterly tender, utterly compassionate. He tried to realize the marvel and mystery of her genius. He knew it to be an immortal thing, hidden behind the veil of mortal flesh that for the moment was so supremely dear to him. He wondered once whether she still cared for Tanqueray. But the thought passed from him; it could not endure beside the memory of her tenderness.
She woke and found his eyes fixed on her. They drew her from sleep, as they had so often drawn her from some dark corner where she had sat removed. She woke, as if at the urgence of a trouble that kept watch in her under her sleep. In a moment she was wide-eyed, alert; she gazed at him with a lucid comprehension of his state. She held out to him an arm drowsier than her thought.