Gerald Goring had been thinking deeply during the hillside walk and the homeward drive, touched inexpressibly by Madoline’s affection, and trying as honestly as was possible to a character which was not given to mental or moral effort—trying to face a future clouded over with fears. Could he ever be again as he had been, Madoline’s true lover? This was the question which he asked himself, coming down the hill in the glory of the evening light, a little aloof from the other three. His honour and reverence for her were in nowise lessened by that fatal passion which had changed the current of his life. He knew that of all women he had ever met she was the noblest and the best; that, with her, life would be lifted above the sordid, vulgar level of selfish pleasures and sensual indulgences; that, as her husband, he could not fail to become in somewise useful to his species, to win some measure of renown, and to leave a name behind him that would sound sweet in the ears of generations to come. He could imagine her in the riper beauty of matronhood, the mother of his children, training up his sons to tread the loftier paths of life, rearing his daughters in an atmosphere of purity and love. He pictured her at the head of his household; he told himself that with such a wife he must be an idiot if he missed happiness. And then he looked with gloomy despairing eyes at the other side of the question, and tried to realise what his life would be with the butterfly being who had crept into his heart and made herself its empress. As well as he knew Lina’s perfection did he know Daphne’s faultiness. She was frivolous, selfish, shallow, capricious, vehement. Yes, but he loved her. She had no higher idea of this world than as a place made exquisitely beautiful in order that she might be happy in it; nor of her fellow-creatures than as persons provided to minister to her pleasures; nor of the future beyond life than as a vague misty something which had better not be thought about; nor of duty, but as a word found in the Church Catechism, and which one might banish from one’s mind after one’s confirmation. Yes, but he loved her. Her faultiness did not lessen his love by the weight of a grain of thistledown. He yearned to take her to his heart, faulty as she was, and cherish her there for ever. He longed to spend the rest of his days with her, and it seemed to him that life would be worthless without her. She might prove a silly wife, a careless mother. Yes, but he loved her. For him she was just the one most exquisite thing in creation, the one supreme necessity of his soul.