She wouldn’t spoil things. Next time she saw him would be heaps soon enough to tell him about Virginia; and on a wet day, not on a fine spring afternoon like this. A wet day and indoors: that was the time and place to tell him. Of course if he became very silly she would tell him instantly; but as long as he wasn’t--and how could he be in an open taxi?--as long as he was just happy to be with her and take her out and walk her round among crocuses and give her tea and bring her home again tucked in as carefully as if she were some extraordinarily precious brittle treasure, why should she interfere? It was so amusing to be a treasure,--yes, and so sweet. Let her be honest with herself--it was sweet. She hadn’t been a treasure, not a real one, not the kind for whom things are done by enamoured men, for years,--indeed, not ever; for George from the first, even before he was one, had behaved like a husband. He was so much older than she was; and though his devotion was steady and lasting he had at no time been infatuated. She had been a treasure, certainly, but of the other kind, the kind that does things for somebody else. Mrs. Mitcham, on a less glorified scale, was that type of treasure. She, Catherine, on a more glorified scale, had been very like Mrs. Mitcham all her life, she thought, making other people comfortable and happy, and being rewarded by their affection and dependence. Also, she had been comfortable and happy herself, undisturbed by desires, unruffled by yearnings. It had been a sheltered, placid life; its ways were ways of pleasantness, and its paths were peace. The years had slipped serenely away in her beautiful country home, undistinguished years, with nothing in any of them to make them stand out afterwards in her memory. The pains in them were all little pains, the worries all little worries. Friendliness, affection, devotion--these things had accompanied her steps, for she herself was so friendly, so affectionate, so devoted. Love, except in these mild minor forms, had not so much as peeped over her rose-grown walls. As for passion, when it leaped out at her suddenly from a book, or she tumbled on it lurking in music, she thrilled a moment and quivered a moment, and then immediately subsided again. Somewhere in the world people felt these things, did these things, were ruined or exalted for ever by these things; but what discomfort, what confusion, what trouble! How much better to go quietly to bed every night with George, to whom she was so much used, and wake up next morning after placid slumbers, strengthened and refreshed for----