"A gentle little wife like that is such a softening influence" was the general verdict ... and Ishmael, irked by the strain between them to a sudden passion of distaste for what he felt had been his weakness, had instituted what was for those days a startling innovation--that of a separate bedroom for himself. He guessed that Phoebe almost hated him for it, yet he had come suddenly to that point when he sickened at over-intimacy, when he realised that the passion in him had betrayed him, so that he felt the only salvation for his mind lay in crushing it. He had sold himself, but at least he could refrain from taking his price. So he told himself and so he meant, yet when, as on a night when Phoebe, shedding resentment for a wistful tenderness, had won him to a triumph of passion once again, there was mingled with his sense of having failed himself a certain relief in the acknowledgment that this thing still held sweets for him.... With the spring the affairs on the farm took up Ishmael's interest more and more, and he was able to find solace for the deadening knowledge of his mistaken marriage in the things that lay so near his heart. He told himself that it was here, in the soil, and the warm, gentle cattle and the growing things, that his keenest as well as his truest joys were to be found, not knowing that even while he thought it Phoebe held that which was to thrill him as never yet anything in life had had power to do. She told him of it one night when he went up to bed late, thinking and hoping she would be asleep. But she called out to him as he passed her door. He went in and found her sitting up, looking like a child among the big white pillows, her brown hair about her wide eyes. He was struck by it and spoke to her gently, telling her to lie down and go to sleep. Instead of obeying she held out her hands and drew him down towards her. "I want to whisper, Ishmael," she said, as she had been wont to say when a little girl and she had had something of tremendous interest to impart. He humoured her, and, putting his arm round her, gathered her against him and said that he was listening. She kept a shy silence for a second after that and then whispered. Ishmael caught the few words, and at first they seemed to him to convey something incredible, though he had often thought about this very thing, wondered if and when he should hear of it. He was very gentle with her, but said little, only he stayed by her till she had fallen asleep, and then he disengaged himself and, going quietly out of the room, opened the front door and went out into the garden.