He turned to look at her and her eyes were looking directly into his. They were standing very close together, almost as close as lovers might have stood, and, in the uncertain light, her eyes were strangely like Natalie’s. In the darkness they appeared to glow as Natalie’s eyes had seemed to glow on that night when he had lain with her in the field. Was it only a chance that this new sense he had, of being able to refresh and rebuild himself by loving others, by going in and out at the open doors of the houses of others, had come to him through Natalie instead of through this woman Katherine? “Huh, it’s marriage, every one is seeking marriage, that’s what they are up to, seeking marriages,” he told himself. There was something quiet and fine and strong in Katherine as in Natalie. Perhaps had he, at some moment, during all his dead unconscious years of living in the same house with her, but happened to have been alone with Katherine in a room, and had the doors to his own being opened at that moment, something might have transpired between himself and this woman that would have started within just such another revolution as the one through which he had been passing. “That was possible too,” he decided. “People would gain a lot if they could but learn to keep that thought in mind,” he thought. His fancy played with the notion for a moment. One would walk through towns and cities, in and out of houses, into and out of the presence of people with a new feeling of respect if the notion should once get fixed in people’s minds that, at any moment, anywhere, one was likely to come upon the one who carried before him as on a golden tray, the gift of life and the consciousness of life for his beloved. Well, there was a picture to be borne in mind, a picture of a land and a people, cleanly arrayed, a people bearing gifts, a people who had learned the secret and the beauty of bestowing unasking love. Such a people would inevitably keep their own persons clean and well arrayed. They would be colorful people with a certain decorative sense, a certain awareness of themselves in relation to the houses in which they lived and the streets in which they walked. One could not love until one had cleansed and a little beautified one’s own body and mind, until one had opened the doors of one’s being and let in sun and air, until one had freed one’s own mind and fancy. John Webster fought with himself now, striving to push his own thoughts and fancies into the background. There he was standing before the house in which he had lived all these years so near the woman Katherine and she was now talking to him of her own affairs. It was time now to give heed to her.