“Aged ten!” remarked Hugh in a tone of absolute incredulity. “Age doesn’t matter. You can be just as jealous at ten as at eighty.” “Probably more,” remarked Hugh parenthetically. “Yes, probably more.” “But she’s an absolute child,” said Hugh. “I never heard such nonsense.” Once again the rain was flung against the windows, and this time it seemed to Edith to sound a different note, just as one night last summer the tapping of the blind had been to her imagination at one moment the beckoning of her lover, and at the next the warning of the years. It was a change like that which happened now. “But you are more nearly her age than mine,” she said. Once or twice during the months since their marriage the thought from which this sprang had stirred in Edith’s mind and shown its face to her. Its appearance was always momentary; it slept sound for the most part, yet just now and then, as at the present hour, it peeped out at her, quick as a lizard out of its crevice in the flowering wall and in again. Up till now, whenever the shadow of it found substance in speech, Hugh had hailed its appearance with derision, even as the birds of day mock at the absurd owl which is so out of place in the sunlight. But now he did not quite do that; he did not instinctively mock at this bird of night, which was so ridiculous, so out of keeping with the day and the sun. “Yes, that is true, though only just true,” he said, “as the measure of years goes. I never thought of that before. How ridiculous it sounds! It just proves what I always thought that years have nothing whatever to do with essential age. Have they?” Hugh probably did not know that he had taken this more seriously than ever before, but Edith knew it. Now for the first time, instead of laughing at her, he had troubled to give an explanation, to show her (and himself perhaps as well) that she was wrong, instead of treating her merely to a shout of derision. The question, though disposed of, had appeared to him debatable, a thing worthy of _pros_ and _cons_, and at that, for one half-second, in spite of the wonderful happiness that had been hers all these months, in spite of all the completeness and content, she felt as if somewhere deep inside her there had come a touch of some pain that was new; a pain that was nothing in itself, unless it was a warning. If it was not that, it was nothing. Then simultaneously almost all her joy of love and life told her it must be nothing. There was no arrow or bolt that could touch her in the dwelling-place where Hugh and she and their love dwelt. By its very nature she knew it must be a place impregnable. And if she had wanted further assurance of that it was ready for her. “Ah! and when shall I become ever so little fit for you?” he asked, again leaning his head back so that he could see her face. “Sometimes I seem to see you standing all radiant, all yourself, on the far side of some stream through which I have to swim to you----”