“Dear, I can’t remember. He was most polite, but— cold. It wasn’t what he said that made me ashamed. It was his manner. Can I ask him down here some day?”

“I don’t know. Not if he was anything approaching rude to you.”

“He wasn’t. Don’t be so silly, Stephen. I shouldn’t want to ask him if he had been rude. You’ve got a hole in your sock.”

“I don’t mind. Oh, Elizabeth, I . . .”

“Yes?” she said softly.

“Nothing. Did Mater send any messages?”

“Crowds. You aren’t to overwork, you’re not to let me overwork, you mustn’t use the word ‘jejune’ in your books more than twice, and—”

“Do I run the word to death?” he asked quickly.

“I haven’t noticed it. Mater says it makes her feel tired.”

On those lines went the conversation; Elizabeth ached to feel Stephen’s arms about her, yet could not summon up the courage to tell him. In this new pain, filled with this devastating want; she realized his feelings during the past year. She could not in silence bear her pain for long; he would bear his until of her own free will she gave herself to him. Her love for him was growing bigger and still stronger, but there was her instinct, and the training of a life-time to be overcome before she could bring herself to say to him, Take me; I am yours. If he would break the oath he had sworn to her, never to speak of love until she asked him, how gladly would she go to him. It seemed that he could not understand her new attitude, and would not follow the lead she gave him. He thought, perhaps, that she meant nothing by her little inviting actions. When she tilted her face upwards, standing close, very close, to him, he would not take the offered kiss. Did he think that she offered it out of friendship or compassion? He should be able to read all that was in her mind, and to see that in her glance was not friendship, but love. Yet this obtuseness, this obstinacy, even while it disappointed her, made her love him the more, tenderly and in pity for his blindness. Mrs. Gabriel had said that men didn’t understand. Elizabeth saw now that when you loved, this lack of perception no longer made you angry, but awoke all the mother that was in you, and made you feel how infinitely wiser you were, even though your husband was more clever than you.