Juley had hesitated long and seriously, but in the end she had taken Sholto instead of her dream of holiness. He was so handsome, so masterful, yet so gracious – so full of sunshine, and apparently so warm. He was so sure too that as his wife she would be fulfilling her true destiny. Every argument was on his side. The idea of a home of her own had always worked strongly in Juley. She loved children and seemed made to care for them. So she recanted. But she never forgot her dream. And when her babes came, she told herself that surely the beings born of such a marriage would give themselves in due time to the Work from which their mother had turned back. Nay, they would do it far better than she, with her many drawbacks of temperament, could ever have done. So one by one she dedicated them, and prayed for them, and was content to be obliterated from the Book of Life itself, if only her prayers might be answered.

With her husband she had a measure of happiness. To the end she idealized him; to the end hid her hunger under self-censure. In the intimate chamber of their married life she was never really awakened. Sholto in the early days used to tell her laughing that she compared favourably with other women in her wifely demands, which he declared were for an almost fraternal affection. She believed this, and was flattered by it as he had intended she should be – impressed too by his air of worldly knowledge. But it was not the truth. She wanted utter union with him, and as he could unite with no one, she remained wrapt within herself. When she felt the stirrings of passion in herself she was dimly ashamed, and had to reason that after all this world was peopled by God’s own ordinances. Only the yielding up of oneself to mere delight was sinful.

As for Sholto, he too was faintly ashamed of his sensual self, but it was not so strong that he could not keep it fairly easily in hand. The baffling truth about him – known to no one, least of all to himself – was that at the very heart of him there was emptiness. He was a fine, gracious figure of a man. But at the centre of his being there was a falling away. This – though he gave other reasons, and believed them – was why he shunned intimacies. Sometimes when life pressed hard on him, a look of vague fear would cross his face. But it always passed quickly, and the guarded, sunlit emptiness returned. He subscribed to the Evangelical system, not passionately like his wife, but because it saved him from thought. He had the faith of a little child; he had also the spasmodic terror of a little child that its faith may be misplaced. Indeed he was in twenty ways a child. He liked all games and played them well without taking special pains – he liked laughter too, and could never resist a pun. Being with his children gave him pleasure, and he took them out for long walks of a Saturday afternoon, when they had much ado to keep up with his strong, springing steps. To them it seemed that the earth shook a little under his tread, and they looked up to him as to a god. To women it was his habit to speak banteringly; and they liked it, smiling on after he was gone.