Anne was right. Though Majendie was, as he expressed it, "up to her designs upon his unhappy soul," he remained unconscious of the part to be played by Mrs. Eliott and her circle in the scheme of his salvation. From his observation of the aristocracy of Thurston Square, it would never have occurred to him that they were people who could count, whichever way you looked at them.

Meanwhile he was a little disturbed by his own appearance as a heavenward pilgrim. He was not sure that he had not gone a little too far that way, and he felt that it was a shame to allow Anne to take him seriously.

He confided his scruples to Edith.

"Poor dear," he said, "it's quite pathetic. You know, she thinks she's saving me."

"And do you mind being saved?"

"Well, no, I don't mind a little of it. But the question is, how long I can keep it up."

"You mean, how long she'll keep it up?"

He laughed. "Oh, she'll keep it up for ever. No possible doubt about that. She'll never tire. I wonder if I ought to tell her."

"Tell her what?"

"That it won't work. That she can't do it that way. She's wasting my time and her own."

"Oh, what's a little time, dear, when you've all eternity in view?"

"But I haven't. I've nothing in view. My view, at present, is entirely obscured by Anne."

"Poor Anne! To think she actually stands between you and your Maker."

"Yes, you know—in her very anxiety to introduce us."

They looked at each other. Her sainthood was so accomplished, her union with heaven so complete, that she could afford herself these profaner sympathies. She was secretly indignant with Anne's view of Walter as unpresentable in the circles of the spiritual Élite.

"It never struck her that you mightn't need an introduction after all; that you were in it as much as she. That's the sort of mistake one might expect from—from a spiritual parvenu, but not from Anne."

"Oh, come, I don't consider myself her equal by a long chalk."

"Well, say she does belong to the peerage; you're a gentleman, and what more can she require?"

"She can't see that I am (If I am. You say so). She considers me—spiritually—a bounder of the worst sort."

"That's her mistake. Though I must say you sometimes lend yourself to it with your horrible profanity."

"I can't help it, Edie. She's so funny with it. She makes me profane."

"Dear Walter, if you can think Anne funny—"

"I do. I think she's furiously funny, and horribly pathetic. All the time, you know, she thinks she's leading me upward. Profanity's my only refuge from hypocrisy."

"Oh no, not your only refuge. You say she thinks she's leading you. Don't let her think it. Make her think you're leading her."

"Do you think," said Majendie, "she'd enjoy that quite so much?"

"She'd enjoy it more. If you took her the right way. The way I mean."

"What's that?"

"You must find out," said she. "I'm not going to tell you everything."

Majendie became thoughtful. "My only fear was that I couldn't keep it up. But you really don't think, then, that I should score much if I did?"

"No, my dear, I don't. And as for keeping it up, you never could. And if you did she'd never understand what you were doing it for. That's not the way to show you're in love with her."

"But that's just what I don't want her to see. That's what she hates so much in me. I've always understood that in these matters it's discreeter not to show your hand too plainly. You see, it's just as if we'd never been married, for all she cares. That's the trouble."

"There's something in that. If she's not in love with you—"

"Look here, Edie, you're a woman, and you know all about them. Do you really, honestly think Anne ever was in love with me?"

"Oh, don't ask me. How should I know?"

"No, but," he persisted, "what do you think?"

"I think she was in love."

"But not with me, though?"

"No, no, not with you."

"With whom, then?"

"Darling idiot, there wasn't any who. If there was, do you think I'd give her away like that? If you'd asked me what she was in love with—"

"Well, what then?"

"Your goodness. She was head over ears in love with that."

"I see. With something that I wasn't."

"No, with something that you were, that you are, only she doesn't know it."

"Then," said Majendie, "you can't get out of it, she's in love with me."

"Oh no, no, you dear goose, not with you. To be in love with you she'd have to be in love with everything you're not, as well as everything you are; with everything you have been, with everything you never were, with everything you will be, with everything you might be, could be, should be."

"That's a large order, Edie."

"There's a larger one than that. She might sweep all that overboard, see it go by whole pieces (the best pieces) at a time, and still be in love with the dear, incomprehensible, indescribable you. That," said Edie, triumphant in her wisdom, "is what being in love is."

"And do you think she isn't in it?"

"No. Not anywhere near it. But—it's a big but—"

"I don't care how big it is. Don't bother me with it."

"Bother you? Why, it's a beautiful but. As I said, she isn't in love with you; but she may be any minute. It's just touch and go with her. It depends on you."

"Heavens, what am I to do? I've done everything."

"Yes, you have, but she hasn't. She's done nothing. She doesn't know how to. You've got to show her."

He shook his head hopelessly. "You're beyond me. I don't understand. There isn't anything for me to do. How am I to show her?"

"I mean show her what there is in it. What it means. What it's going to be for her as well as you. Just go at it hard, harder than you did before you married her."

"I see, I've got to make love to her all over again."

"Exactly. All over again from the very beginning."

"I say!" He took it in, her idea, in all the width and splendour of its simplicity. "And do it differently?"

"Oh, very differently."

"I don't quite see where the difference is to come in. What did I do before that was so wrong?"

"Nothing. That's just the worst of it. It was all too right. Ever so much too right. Don't you see? It's what we've been talking about. You made her in love with your goodness. And she was in love with it, not because it was your goodness, but because it was her own. That's why she wanted to marry it. She couldn't be in love with it for any other reason, because she's an egoist."

"No. There you're quite wrong. That's what she isn't."

"Oh, you are in love with her. Of course she's an egoist. All the nicest women are. I'm an egoist myself. Do you love me less for it?"

"I don't love you less for anything."

"Well—unless you can make Anne jealous of me—and you can't—you've got to love me less, now, dear boy. That's where I come in—to be kept out of it."

She had led him breathless on her giddy round; she plunged him back into bewilderment. He hadn't a notion where she was taking him to, where they would come out; but there was a desperate delight in the impetuous journey, the wind of her sudden flight lifted him and carried him on. He had always trusted the marvellous inspirations of her heart. She had failed him once; but now he could not deny that she had given him lights, and he looked for a stupendous illumination at the end of the way.

"Out of it!" he exclaimed. "Why, where should I have been without you? You were the beginning of it."

"I was indeed. You've got to take care I'm not the end of it, that's all."

"What on earth do you mean?"

"I mean what I say. You don't want Anne to be in love with you for my sake, do you?"

"N—no. I don't know that I do exactly. At least I should prefer that she was in love with me for my own."

"Well, you must make her, then. That's why you've got to leave me out of it. I've been too much in it all along. It was through me she conceived that unfortunate idea of your goodness. I'm its father and its mother and its nurse, I ministered to it every hour. I fed it, I brought it up, I brought it out, I provided all the opportunity for its display. Nothing else had a show beside your goodness, Wallie dear. It was something monstrous. It took Anne's affection from you and concentrated it all on itself. She worshipped it, she clung to it, she saw nothing else but it, and when it went everything went. You went first of all. Well, you must just see that that doesn't happen again."

"You mean that I must lead a life of iniquity?"

"You mustn't lead a life of anything."

"Do you mean I mustn't be good any more?"

Majendie's imagination played hilariously with this fantastic, this preposterous notion of his goodness.

"Oh yes, be good," said Edith, "but not too good. Above all, not too good to me. Concentrate on her, stupid."

"I have concentrated," he moaned, mystified beyond endurance. "Besides, you said I couldn't make her jealous."

"No, I wish you could. I mean, don't let her fall in love with your devotion to me again. Don't hold her by that one rope. Hold her by all your ropes; then, if one goes, it doesn't so much matter."

"I see. You don't trust my goodness."

"Oh, I trust it, so will she again. But don't you trust it. That precious goodness of yours is your rival. A bad, dangerous rival. You've got to beat it out of the field. Show that you're jealous of it. A little judicious jealousy won't hurt." Edith's eyes were still and profound with wisdom. "I don't believe you've ever yet made love to Anne properly. That's what it all comes to."

"Oh, I say," said he, "what do you know about it?"

"I'm only judging," said Edith, "by the results."

"Oh, that isn't fair."

"Perhaps it isn't," she owned, her wisdom growing by what it fed on.

"You see, she wouldn't let me do it properly."

Edith pondered. "Yes, but how long ago is it? And you've been married since."

"What difference does that make?"

"I should say it would make all the difference. Anne was a girl, then. She didn't understand. She's a woman now. She does understand. She can be appealed to."

He hid his face in his hands.

"I never thought of that," he murmured thickly.

"Of course you didn't."

"Edie," he said, and his face was still hidden, "however did you think of it?"

"Oh, I don't know. I see some things, and then other things come round to me. But you mustn't forget that you've got to begin all over again from the very beginning. You'll have to be very careful with her, every bit as careful as if she were a strange lady you've just met at a dance. Don't forget that she's strange, that she's another woman, in fact."

"I see. If there are to be many of these remarkable transformations of Anne, I shall have all the excitement of polygamy without its drawbacks."

"You will. And it's the same for her, remember. You're a strange man. You've just been introduced, you know—by me—and you're begging for the pleasure of the first waltz, and Anne pretends that her programme is full, and you look over her shoulder and see that it isn't, and that she puts you down for all the nice ones. And you sit out all the rest, and you flirt on the stairs, and take her in to supper, and, finally, you know, you pull yourself together and you do it—in the conservatory. Oh, it'll be so amusing, and so funny to watch. You'll begin by being most awfully polite to each other."

"I suppose I may yet be permitted to call this strange young lady Anne?"

"Yes. That's because you remember that you have known her once before, a very long time ago, when you were children. You are children, both of you. Oh, Walter, I believe you're looking forward to it; I believe you're glad you've got to do it all over again."

"Yes, Edie, I positively believe I am."

He rose, laughing, prepared to begin that minute his new wooing of Anne.

"Good-bye," said Edith, "it is good-bye, you know, and good luck to you."

This time she knew that she had been wise for him.

Anne would have been horrified if she had known that the situation, so terrible for her, was developing for her husband certain possibilities of charm. His irrepressible boyishness refused to accept it in all its moral gloom. There were, he perceived, advantages in these strained relations. They had removed Anne into the mysterious realm her maidenhood had inhabited, before marriage had had time to touch her magic. She had become once more the unapproachable and unattained. Their first courtship, pursued under intolerable restrictions of time and place, had been a rather uninspired affair, and its end a foregone conclusion. He had been afraid of himself, afraid sometimes of her. For he had not brought her the spontaneous, unalarmed, unspoiled spirit of his youth. He had come to her with a stain on his imagination and a wound in his memory. And she was holy to him. He had held himself in, lest a touch, a word, a gesture should recall some insufferable association.

Marriage had delivered him from the tyranny of reminiscence. No reminiscence could stand before the force of passion in possession. It purified; it destroyed; it built up in three days its own inviolable memory.

And Anne, with the best will in the world, had had no power to undo its work in him.

In herself, too, below her kindling spiritual consciousness, in the unexplored depth and darkness of her, its work remained.

Majendie was unaware how far he had become another man and she another woman. He was merely alive to the unusual and agreeable excitement of wooing his own wife. There was a piquancy in the experiment that appealed to him. Her new coldness called to him like a challenge. Her new remoteness waked the adventurous youth in him. His imagination was touched as it had not been touched before. He could see that Anne had not yet got over her discovery. The shock of it was in her nerves. He felt that she shrank from him, and his chivalry still spared her.

He ceased to be her husband and became her very courteous, very distant lover. He made no claims, and took nothing for granted. He simply began all over again from the very beginning. His conscience was vaguely appeased by the illusion of the new leaf, the rejuvenated innocence of the blank page. They had never been married (so the illusion suggested). There had been no revelations. They met as strangers in their own house, at their own table. In support of this pleasing fiction he set about his courtship with infinite precautions. He found himself exaggerating Anne's distance and the lapse of intimacy. He made his way slowly, through all the recognised degrees, from mere acquaintance, through friendship to permissible fervour.

And from time to time, with incomparable discretion, he would withhold himself that he might make himself more precious. He was hardly aware of his own restraint, his refinements of instinct and of mood. It was as if he drew, in his desperate necessity, upon unrealised, untried resources. There was something in Anne that checked the primitive impulse of swift chase, and called forth the curious half-feminine cunning of the sophisticated pursuer. She froze at his ardour, but his coldness almost kindled her, so that he approached by withdrawals and advanced by flights.

He displayed, first of all, a heavenly ignorance, an inspired curiosity regarding her. He consulted her tastes, as if he had never known them; he started the time-honoured lovers' topics; he talked about books—which she preferred and the reasons for her preference.

He did not advance very far that way. Anne was simply annoyed at the lapses in his memory.

He then began to buy books on the chance of her liking them, which answered better.

He promoted himself by degrees to personalities. He talked to her about herself, handling her with religious reticence as a thing of holy and incomprehensible mystery.

"I suppose," he said one day, "if I were good enough, I should understand you. Why do you sigh like that? Is it because I'm not good enough? Or because I don't understand?"

"I think," said she, "it is because I don't understand you."

"My dear" (he allowed himself at this point the more formal endearment), "I thought I was disgracefully transparent—I'm limpidity, simplicity itself. I've only one idea and one subject of conversation. Ask Edith. She understands me."

"Ah, Edith—" said Anne, as if Edith were a very different affair.

The intonation was hopeful, it suggested some slender and refined jealousy. (If only he could make her jealous!)

On the strength of it he advanced to the punctual daily offering of flowers, flowers for her drawing-room, flowers for her bedroom, flowers for her to wear. After that he took to writing her letters from the office with increasing frequency and fervour. Anne, too, was courteous and distant. She accepted all he had to offer as a becoming tribute to her feminine superiority, and evaded dexterously the deeper issue.

Now and then he reported his progress to Edith.

"I rather think," he said, "she's coming round. I'm regarded as a distinctly eligible person."

They laughed at his complete adoption of the part and his innocent joy in it.

That had always been his way. When he had begun a game there was no stopping him. He played it through to the end.

Edith would look up smiling and say: "Well, how goes the affair?" (They always called it the affair.) Or: "How did you get on to-day?"

And it would be: "Pretty well."—"Better to-day than yesterday."—"No luck to-day."

One Sunday he came to her radiant.

"She really does," said he, "seem interested in what I say."

"What did you talk about?"

"The influence of Christianity on woman. Was that good?"

"Very good."

"I didn't know very much about it, but I got her to tell me things."

"That," said Edith, "was still better."

"But she sticks to it that she doesn't understand me. That's bad."

"No," said Edith, "that's best of all. It shows she's thinking of you. She wants to understand. Believe me, the affair marches."

He meditated on that.

In the evening, the better to meditate, he withdrew to his study. It was not long before Anne came to him of her own accord. She asked if she might read aloud to him.

"I should be honoured," he replied stiffly.

She chose Emerson, "On Compensation." And Majendie did not care for Emerson.

But Anne had a charming voice; a voice with tones that penetrated like pain, that thrilled like a touch, that clung delicately like a shy caress; tones that were as a funeral bell for sadness; tones that rose to passion without ever touching it; clear, cool tones that were like water to passion's flame. Majendie closed his eyes and let her voice play over him.

"Did you like it?" she asked gravely.

"Like it? I love it."

"So do I. I hoped you would."

"My dear, I didn't understand one word of it."

"You can't make me believe you loved it then."

He looked at her.

"I loved the sound of your voice, dear."

"Oh," said she coldly, "is that all?"

"Yes," he said, "isn't it enough?"

"I'd rather—" she began and hesitated.

"You'd rather I understood Emerson?"

Her blood flushed in the honey whiteness of her face. She rose, put the book in its place, and left the room.

"Edith," he said, relating the incident afterwards, "I thought she was coming round when she wanted to read to me. Why did she get up and go like that?"

"She went, dear goose, because she was afraid to stay."

"Why afraid?"

"Because she's fighting you, Wallie. It's all right if she's got to fight."

"Yes, but suppose she wins?"

"She can't win fighting—she's a woman. Her only chance is to run away."

That night Anne knelt by her bedside and hid her face and prayed for Walter; that he might be purified, so that she might love him without sin; that he and she might travel together on the divine way, and together be received into the heavenly places.

She had felt that night the stirring of natural affection. It had come back to her, a feeble, bruised, humiliated thing. She could not harbour it without spiritual justification.

She kept herself awake by saying: "I can't love him, I can't love him—unless God makes him fit for me to love."

Sleeping, she dreamed that she was in his arms.