“Well, I like to go out for pleasure.” “By all means, Davie. But don’t have too much. You may get tired of it. Then what will you do?” He laughed. “Perhaps then you’d have more time for your middle-aged friend.” His mood was changed. The will to hurt was gone. It was as if in its fulfillment he had been assuaged. Tom looked at David now with a warm candor. And David, looking at Tom, realized that this was a great joy--this talking with his friend: it was clear and deep and right: and what had come before was already dim, had already lost its taste. Even as he looked back for it, that seemed less real than this. Something of the essence of these thoughts Tom found and was glad. “Come, old man,” he said. “Light your pipe: let’s have a chat.” * * * * * In a way so gradual and smooth he had no heed, life was going well with David. He was relaxed before all its elements that met him. His mind, instead of sallying out to measure and contest each meeting with reality and to reduce it in vassalage of his own subjective world, receded now within itself and what it found disguised, remolded into consonance with the world meeting him. His easy acquiescence in Constance Bardale’s sense of their relation brought him reward which his new mood could value. The delusion of love was rent away. Remained the reality of passion to be accepted or denied. He was in no mood for denial. Tacitly he let slip all he had dreamed of woman, all he had dreamed of love. He had no thought of a next-coming step with Constance. He was not open to surprise or worry. He was calm, contained. He was the very lover she desired. And proud of his success. Proud of his conquest of one whom a naif part of him still found miraculous and remote. At her parties now he fell back into a silence and reserve of a different meaning. He knew himself the secret master. The homage of her guests to Constance was homage to him. Men feeling for her with tense nerves, warm eyes; women seeking her secret in her words and gestures, envying her power, glad to share in its largess and pick up the aroused senses of the men that she sent retreating from her--was incense to David. He could afford to recline away from the conversation: he could dare outstay the last of the guests and hold her one moment in his arms, drink in one draught the wine of the evening’s excitement upon her lips before he left her also. He did not see her too often. She saw to that. She had a tact and a control that were artistry. And a consciousness of this that made her jealous of her standards, steeled her against lowering them, filled her with a firm discipline of pleasure. She designed the mingling of their lives with restraint and omission, with emphasis and grace of color. David breathed the well-being that must rise from any poise of forces. He had the comfort of the part in an harmonious whole. Now this well-being wreathed forth into the other, the deeper phases of his world.