Her innate sense of beauty startled him afresh every day. All that he idealised was an open book to her. Bellair had planned his house in the New York room. The greatest houses are planned so, by those who suffer and are confined. It had not come to him in the form of this stone cottage by the sea. This was not his dream that had come true here, although in many ways it was fairer than his dream. Very plainly, this little rock-bound eyrie was of her fashioning--the very atoms of it, drawing together to conform with the picture in her mind. He loved the place better so. Perhaps her thought of a home had been the stronger. “It is almost perfect now,” she would say. “The neglect has made it right. A few roses, some bee-hives, vines and perennials--the rest is just clearing and cleansing. I could go over all the leaves and branches with a soapy sponge. The rest is to prune and thin and cleanse--so the sunlight is not shut from anywhere altogether--so it all can breathe----” He caught the picture in her mind--foliage cut away for the play of sun and wind everywhere--the chaste and enduring beauty of leaf and stone and moving water. And now appeared a bit of her nature quite as real: “And then those extra two rooms, I could rent them and give board----” “Oh, but you don’t have to.” “I have always had much to do. I must have work now.” She had no realisation of property; material poverty was a part of her temperament. She was superbly well, and could only remain so by the expenditure of ample energy. Bellair saw the Martha soul, the mother of men, a breadgiver. He thought of the passion of men for the vine-women, and of the clinging sons they bear.... He lingered over a ship, and another. They toiled together like two peasants in the open, the baby sitting in the sun, the house ashine within. She would have only the simple things. She loved fine textures, but only of the lasting fabrics in woods and wares. She was content to carry water and trim lamps. She loved the stones and the low open fires. Often she turned away seaward, as he had seen her from the _Jade’s_ rail, and from the bow seat of the open boat. Once in the garden, he made the child laugh, to bring back her eyes, and she said: “I love it so here, but I don’t want to love it, so that it would hurt terribly, if it were taken away.” This was but one side. There were other moments, in which Bessie and New York and all that he and the Faraway Woman had been, seemed fused into a ball of mist whirling away, and they stood together, man and woman, touching sanity at last in a world of power and glory. It was not then a time for words.... Once their hands went out together, and holding for a moment, Bellair had the strange sense of the self sinking from him. He could not feel his hand or any part of his being--as if it were a part of her, two creatures blent into one, and an indescribable rush of something different than physical vitality.