"I would choose to live by touch," he said. "If two people can't communicate fully and sufficiently by the feelers they are not in the same sphere and have no common language. But speech is absurd. Why, every phrase, and nearly every word, has a conventional value." By touch! She was set dreaming by that. So she and James--a James she had had no conception of--had communicated not four-and-twenty hours ago. Certainly subsequent speech had not advanced the intelligence then conveyed. But she resumed Urquhart's affairs. "And do you despair of finding a woman with whom you can hold communion?" "No," he said, looking at the bread which he broke. "I don't despair at all. I think that I shall find her." And then he looked steadily at her, and she felt a little uncomfortable. But it was over in a minute. She feared to provoke that again, so made no fishing comment; but she was abundantly curious of what his choice would be. Meantime he mused aloud. "What you want for a successful marriage is--a layer of esteem, without which you will infallibly, if you are a man, over-reach yourself and be disgusted; then a liberal layer of animal passion--and I only shrink from a stronger word for fear of being misunderstood--which you won't have unless you have (a) vitality, (b) imagination; thirdly, for a crown, respect. You must know your due, and your duty, and fear to omit the one or excuse the other. Everything follows from those three." "And how do you know when you have found them?" He looked up and out into the country. "A sudden glory," he said, "a flare of insight. There's no mistake possible." "Who was the man," she asked him, rather mischievously, "who saw a girl at a ball, and said, 'That's a fine girl; I'll marry her'--and did it--and was miserable?" He twinkled as he answered, "That was Savage Landor; but it was his own fault. He could never make concessions." She thought him a very interesting companion. On the way home he talked more fitfully, with intervals of brooding silence. But he was not morose in his fits, and when he excused himself for sulking, she warmly denied that he did any such thing. "I expect you are studying the motor," she said; and he laughed. "I'm very capable of that." Altogether, a successful day. She returned braced to her duties, her James, and his hidden-up Eros. To go home to James had become an exciting thing to do. CHAPTER VII PATIENCE AND PSYCHE