“Wonder if he’s going off his head!” he thought with sorrowful concern. “And it’s taking the form of antipathy to women. First Nouna; then Sundran; last of all this Chloris White! Poor old chap! Poor dear old chap! that comes of marrying Lady Florencecourt; or perhaps his marriage was the first sign of it.” And George, trying in vain to account in any other way for the strange behaviour of his friend, went home to renewed raptures over his own happier choice. CHAPTER XVIII. George Lauriston’s gloomy forebodings at the entire change in their manner of life brought about by Nouna’s becoming a comparatively rich woman, were not, in the first few weeks at least, fulfilled. The new way of living pleased the volatile child-woman much better than the old; and as she was never happy or miserable by halves, her joy in her good fortune was so strong as to be infectious; it was impossible to live in the neighbourhood of her full sensuous delight in existence without catching some of its radiance; and George, while ashamed of the weakness which made him take the colour of his life from hers, when he had meant in the most orthodox way to make her tastes and feelings accord with his own, found a fierce and ever-strengthening pleasure in the intoxicating love-draughts his passion afforded him, until his ambition, which perhaps had been none of the highest, began to sleep, and thought and principle to grow languid under the enervating influence of the question: What good in heaven or earth is worth the striving for, when this, the most absorbing soul or sense can imagine, is close to my hand, at my lips? And so, as in all encounters of the affections, the greater love was at the mercy of the less; and George, telling himself that time and experience would develop in her all those other qualities which his own efforts had failed to draw out, but which, being part of his conception of the ideal woman, must lie dormant somewhere in the queen of his heart, gave himself up to adoration of those excellences in her which had been already demonstrated; and they lived through those hot summer weeks in happiness, which caused the one first awake in the morning to touch the other softly, doubtingly, to make sure that their life of dream-like joy was a reality still.