She was tired. He remembered how tired she used to be at Harmouth; and he noticed with a pang how little it took to tire her now. She leaned back in his chair, propped by the cushions he had chosen for her (chosen with a distinct prevision of the beauty of the white face and dark hair against that particular shade of greenish blue). She had been reading one of his books; it lay in her lap. Her feet rested on his fender, they stretched out towards the warmth of his fire. If only it were permitted to him always to buy things for her; always to give her the rest she needed; always to care for her and keep her warm and well. He wondered how things had gone with her those five years. Had she been happy in that college in the south? Had they been kind to her, those women; or had they tortured her, as only women can torture women, in some devilish, subtle way? Or would overwork account for the failure of her strength? He thought he saw signs in her tender face of some obscure, deep-seated suffering of the delicate nerves. Well, anyhow she was resting now. And in looking at her he rested, too, from the labour of conscience and the trouble of desire. Heart and senses were made quiet by her mere presence. If his hands trembled as they waited on her it was not with passion but with some new feeling, indescribable and profound. For brought so near to him as this, so near as to create the illusion of possession, she became for him something too sacred for his hands to touch.
He could count on about half an hour of this illusion before Flossie appeared. Afraid of losing one moment of it, he began instantly on the thing he had to say.
"All this time I've been waiting to thank you for your introduction to Fielding."
"Oh," she said eagerly, "what did he say? Tell me."
He told her. As she listened he could see how small a pleasure was enough to give life again to her tired face.
"I am so glad," she said in the low voice of sincerity; "so very glad." She paused. "That justifies my belief in you. Not that it needed any justification."
"I don't know. Your cousin, who is the best critic I know, would tell you that it did."
"My cousin—perhaps. But he does see that those poems are great. Only he's so made that I think no greatness reconciles him to—well, to little faults, if they are faults of taste."
"Did you find many faults of taste?"
She smiled. "I found some; but only in the younger poems. There were none—none at all—in the later ones. Which of course is what one might expect."