George, while accepting for himself the same partial seclusion, had more freedom. He rode into town three or four times every week; got the news of the clubs and the streets; loitered about Maiden Lane and the shopping district; and when disappointed and vexed at events went to his Grandmother Van Heemskirk for sympathy. For, as yet, he hesitated about naming Cornelia to his mother. He was sure she was aware of his passion, and her reticence on the subject made him fear she was going to advocate the fulfilment of his father's promise. And he had such a singular delicacy about the girl he loved that he could not endure the thought of bandying her name about in an angry discussion. Added to this fine sense was an adoring love for his mother. She was in anxiety enough, and would be, until she heard of her husband's safety; why, then, should he add his anxiety to hers? Yet he was not happy about Cornelia. Since that unfortunate morning at Richmond Hill they had never met. If she saw him go up or down Maiden Lane, she made no sign. Several times Arenta's face at her parlour window had given him a passing hope; but Arenta's own love affairs were just then at a very interesting point; and, besides, she regarded the young Lieutenant's admiration for her friend as only one of his many transient enthusiasms. "If there was anything real in it," she reflected, "Cornelia would have talked about him; and that she has never done." Then she began to remember, with pride, the very sensible behaviour of her own lover. "My Athanase," she reflected, "did not give me an hour's rest until we were engaged. He insisted on talking to father about our marriage settlements and our future--in fact, he made of love a thing possible and practical. A lover like Joris Hyde is not, I think, very fortunate." She did not understand that the quality of love in its finest revelation desires, after its first sweet inception, a little period of withdrawal--it wonders at its strange happiness--broods over it--is fearful of disturbing emotions so exquisite--prefers the certainty of its delicious suspense to a more definite understanding, and finds a keen strange delight in its own poignant anxieties and hopes. These are the birth pangs of an immortal love--of a love that knows within itself, that it is born for Eternity, and need not to hurry the three-score-and-ten years of time to a consummation. Of such noble lineage was the love of Cornelia for Joris Hyde. His gracious, beautiful youth, seemed a part of her own youth; his ardent, tender glances had filled her heart with a sweet trouble that she did not understand. It was the most natural thing in the world that she should wish to be apart; that she should desire to brood over feelings so strangely happy; and that in this very brooding they should grow to the perfect stature of a luminous and unquenchable affection.