"Calmness is comparative--everything is comparative. It's impossible to know how much people feel... Oh, Beloved, there are so many sorts, and if they don't feel _our_ way, it may be just as bad to them! Martin! we've been married six months, we know each other six hundred times better than when we began, and there's this virtue about me--I don't pretend! You know the worst of me, as well as the best. Honestly--on your solemnest oath,--have you _ever_ been sorry?" Martin did not reply. He smiled a smile of ineffable content. Grizel tilted her head on the cushion, and smiled back. "I _knew_ you haven't. That's why I asked. If there had been the faintest doubt, I couldn't have faced it to-day. But there are so many months--life is so long. Martin! you might change!" Martin's face sobered. His thoughts flew back to the girl wife who, for a few short months, had shared his life; at whose death life itself had seemed to end. He had been but twenty-five at the time, and he had suffered with all the fierce intensity of youth. If Juliet had made a similar suggestion in those far-off days, he would have refuted it with scorn, yet he _had_ changed; the young image had faded, and a living woman now filled his heart. Was it the remembrance of Juliet, which made Grizel doubt? "So long as you live, Grizel, it isn't possible that I could change. A man who had once loved you could never be satisfied with an ordinary woman. And I am a man now, not a boy. Even--even if I were alone again--" She leant forward in a quick caress. "You are not going to be alone! I am not going to leave you, Honey! If I were, I should not ask for promises. It's because I intend to live on to eighty or ninety, that I'm anxious. I couldn't bear it if you grew cool and cold. I wouldn't _try_ to bear it! Prosaic matrimony would drive me to the devil. I can't tell you what sort of devil,--there might be several, but a devil it would certainly be. But if you'll love me, dear, I'll grow nearer the angels!" He laid his head beside hers on the cushion, and they sat silently, through blessed moments of communion. In heart and love they were at one, but their thoughts carried them on different voyages. When he spoke again, it was to say in tones of kindly toleration: "Don't be too hard on the poor Squire. He's a good fellow, and, as you say, there are all sorts. Presumably she loved that sort. She chose him, you know."