There had been Anne. She did not disturb what he had learned of women. The self-bestowal of woman was a part, a great part, of the goodness of God. Woman had no need save for children: no joy save in the bitterness of serving. Anne was there like a sweet delirious dream in the fevered night. She had lain beside him and mothered his distress; she had given him of her strength to be strong in the morning. When she judged he had had enough of her, very calmly, very like a mother weaning her child, she had put him aside. All of it a sort of passionate nursing: the sort that the passionate nights with their drain of fire demanded. Anne had always been silent. His heart’s way of woman remained. In a veiled moment, she came and offered up her sweetness to the yearning of man. A mystery--a mystery that now had come to him! In the flesh. In the lovely flesh of Constance! She received him in the same small room. David was momently chilled by her precise difference from the image of his three days’ thoughts. She came up to him and let her arms glide softly over his and warmed him. He looked down at her. He saw how the loose folds of her _cérise_ robe parted and fell from her uplifted elbows: how, underneath, her bosom was held tight in a white band of lace. He thought that he might take that lace away and truly see this bosom, crush it with his mouth. He could scarcely see at all. He checked himself. This was unworthy of him: unfair to her. He began to talk. But she smiled and came close to him again: she stopped his words with her body. Her eyes fixed on his with a plea that he need not talk. He tried to tell of his love, of his devotion, of his thanks, and she was stiff, impregnable to words. He kissed her, had her body in his hands, and there she was pliant, singing with response. So, soon she lay there under his eyes and he had forgotten to say the things his duty ordered.... At last he made a mighty effort. He sat beside her on the couch. She was cool and straight beside him. She was like a beach that the tide had left and that the sun had hardened. Golden-smooth. Her breasts lay firm, her thighs rounded and fell like lovely scoopings of summer waves. She was there like a strand of the earth, waiting for the tide to return upon her. David managed to speak. “Constance dear,” he began. She laid her hand on his and he clasped it. She seemed suddenly afraid. “Constance, I feel that I have so much that I want to tell you.... Constance, it is only this that I love you with all my heart and soul: that always----” He stopped. There she was stopping him again. She had withdrawn her hand. “Don’t, David! Don’t!” Her hand on his mouth. He felt ashamed, ashamed of their nakedness together. “You mustn’t use that word _Love_ so lightly, David.” He was all pale inside. He felt that his breast had suddenly caved in and that his heart beat hurtfully against its broken walls. “I do love you, Constance.” “No you don’t. Don’t be silly, David.”