His love for her, humble, triumphant, diffident, passionate, impatient by turns, now exacting, now selfless, possessed him entirely. He remembered once, with astonishment, that he was making a magnificent match. He had never thought of it, as Rachel knew, as she knew well. * * * * * December came in bleak and dark. The snow did its poor best, laying day after day its white veil upon the dismal streets. But it was misunderstood. It was scraped into murky heaps. It melted and then froze, and then melted again. And London groaned and shivered on its daily round. Every afternoon Hugh came, and every morning Rachel made her rooms bright with flowers for him. The flower shop at the corner sent her tiny trees of white lilac, and sweet little united families of hyacinths and tulips. The time of azaleas was not yet. And once he sent her a bunch of daffodils. He knew best how he had obtained them. Their wild, sweet faces peered at Rachel, and she sat down faint and dizzy, holding them in her nerveless hands. If one daffodil knows anything, all daffodils know it to the third and fourth generation. "Where is he?" they said. "That man whom you loved once? We were there when he spoke to you. We saw you stand together by the attic window. We never say, but we heard, we remember. And you cried for joy at night afterwards. We never say. But we heard. We remember." Rachel's secretary in the little room on the ground-floor was interrupted by a tap at the door. Rachel came in laden with daffodils. Their splendor filled the gray room. "Would you mind having them?" she said, smiling, and laying them down by her. "And would you kindly write a line to Jones telling him not to send me daffodils again. They are a flower I particularly dislike." * * * * * "Rachel?" "Hugh!" "Don't you think it would be better if we were married immediately?" "Better than what?" "Oh, I don't know; better than breaking it off." "You can't break it off now. I'm not a person to be trifled with. You have gone too far." "If you gave me half your attention, you would understand that I am only expressing a wish to go a little further, but you have become so frivolous since we have been engaged that I hardly recognize you." "I suit myself to my company." "Are you going to talk to me in that flippant manner when we are married. I sometimes fear, Rachel, you don't look upon me with sufficient awe. I foresee I shall have to be very firm when we are married. When may I begin to be firm?" "Are these such evil days, Hugh?" "I am like Oliver Twist," he said. "I want more." * * * * * They were sitting together one afternoon in the fire-light in silence. They often sat in silence together. "A wise woman once advised me," said Rachel at last, "if I married, never to tell my husband of any previous attachment. She said, Let him always believe that he was the first