In a thousand little ways she wooed him, audacious and shy, terrified lest he should see at last, miserable when he did not. When he called her to come and read some paragraph of his book, she would rest her hand on his shoulder, and bend over him so that her hair brushed his cheek and her breast touched his arm. She could feel the stiffening of his muscles, sometimes hear a quick intake of breath. All her instincts urged flight, but she stayed, hoping. His level voice cast down her hopes every time; she was back at the beginning again, bruised and sad, but still indomitable.

It did more to kill the prude in her than all else through which she had passed. With a tiny smile she reflected that she was not behaving like a “nice” girl at all, but like a minx. Then she thought, I’m not a girl, but a wife. Anything that I do with Stephen is right. Even when I try to vamp him. That made her laugh, for there was nothing of the vamp in her, and she knew it.

Once Stephen grasped her shoulders and said stormily,

“You drive me mad! What is this queer elusive air of yours?”

She shivered, and was still under his hands. The grip loosened.

“Sorry, ’Lisbeth. Forgetting myself.”

She tried to say the words that were in her heart. They would not be spoken; she could only run from the room, furious with herself, and with him.

The book was nearing its end. When it is finished, Elizabeth thought, I will tell him.

But she hoped that he would see before that. Curled on the sofa in the evening, a rose-shaded light behind her, she watched Stephen at work, and could almost find it in her to be jealous of the woman in his book who occupied his thoughts. Time wore on, and in the hall the old grandfather clock struck midnight, but she would not go up to bed. Stephen would send her there if he remembered her presence, but he was absorbed in his writing; he had forgotten time and her.

An hour later he pushed the work away and stretched mightily, yawning. He rose, and saw Elizabeth, fast asleep among the silken cushions, her hair a little ruffled, and one hand lying palm upwards upon her lap. He stood very still, looking down upon her, drinking in her beauty till his hands clenched hard at his sides, and his mouth went awry at the pain of it.

Gently he slipped his arms under her; she stirred but did not awake; her cheek lay now against his shoulder, rosy in sleep; she was in his arms, yielding and sweet.