But Joan was appeased. Certainties which had quaked lately were stable again. Hugh adored her. Just now what she usually got only in his eyes and kisses, he had given her in words. For once and at last he was articulate, poor darling. Complacency, almost amounting to beatitude, reëstablished itself in her psyche. But it was a beatitude just tainted, curdled rather, with scorn. Joan regretted the curdle. But it was inevitable. For it is a law of the heart, she realized, that love given so completely as Hugh’s was given, with nothing reserved, can never have its like in return. “And it’s a pity,” she thought a little bitterly. “For if I could be absolutely sure of a love like Hugh’s, and return it, it would be bliss. The trouble is, one can’t. It’s against nature.” Wistfully, some lines from an Irish poet echoed through her mind. Never give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth thinking of To passionate women, if it seem Certain, and they never dream That it fades out from kiss to kiss. She pulled off her lemon-colored gloves and reached a warm vital hand, laying each separate finger exactly on Hugh’s fingers, which were guiding the wheel now through Fifth Avenue traffic. She measured their hands thus. And hers were only a little smaller than his. For Joan’s hands, though beautiful, with their smooth palms and backs, and the long conical fingers, glistening-tipped, were large and strong. The hand on Hugh’s shut away the hot, spring sunlight. And it seemed almost, then, as though his whole body as by infection from the shadowed hand was darkened slowly. Flames might any instant roar through that dark. But his expression was unmoved except for straightened lips. His eyes remained keen for every loophole in the difficult traffic. Even his hand, under that shut-down vital one on it, vibrated only with the nuances of steering. Joan was absorbed like a child in the way her enameled finger nails reflected the spring sunlight. And then she became aware of how beautifully shaped and groomed were Hugh’s own almond-shaped nails. By shifting the tips of her fingers ever so slightly she could see the moons at the base of his nails, so clear, high and definite. “You have nice hands, Hugh,” she murmured. “Terribly nice.” And when he did not respond by look or word she added with sudden generosity, “I’ll ’fess up, dear. I did make an idiotic and totally moronish mistake about ‘Noon’ five years ago when you brought it to me from Bermuda. But don’t tell on me, please; I am ashamed. And it doesn’t matter to you what any one thinks of your taste. You don’t pretend to anything, you dear, so they can’t show you up, do you see!” “Oh, it doesn’t matter,” Hugh muttered. He meant, of course, “What does anything matter compared with your hand on mine, and this darkness and its flame corroding my body, my mind!”