This was pleasant and pretty. Gundred’s instincts found it blankly empty and chilling. He meant to be so warm, but a month ago such an advance as hers would have been very differently met. Then he had thought her cold, had been for ever calling upon her to thaw. Now he hardly appeared to notice whether she was warm or cold, despite his manifestations of enthusiasm. Now it was he that was frozen, and she might thaw, it seemed, in vain. Had her melting come too late? ‘Wouldn’t you?’ she answered slowly. ‘Are you really sure you wouldn’t? Kingston,’ she went on in a low voice, ‘I do so want to do and say what you like.’ She hesitated and broke off, seeking piteously for words that should salve her pride in its downfall. He could not understand that her seriousness demanded the tribute of a serious answer in return. He gave her another of those easy protestations which sounded so well, and yet, as she felt, meant so little. ‘You always do,’ he replied, ‘always and always. You can’t tell how much pleasure you give us, Gundred.’ Against this geniality, so smooth, so superficial, she felt horribly powerless. There seemed no way, any longer, of piercing to her husband’s notice, of spurring him up to sincerity. And that casual ‘us’ shut the door against her so finally. ‘Ah,’ she answered in a tired tone, her smile tinged with tragedy. ‘You say such delightful things. But I do feel I am not clever enough for you.’ ‘It is not cleverness one wants,’ he said. ‘It is just you. You, and only you. You are exactly perfect. One doesn’t criticize and say you are not this and that. You are just You.’ She knew that he no longer criticized. But what he thought loyalty she felt to be lack of interest. The ardour of his words awoke now no answering ardour of conviction in her mind. As for Kingston, an emotion of pure pity stirred him. This charming, dear little woman, how awfully much, after all, he owed her. He believed that he could only pay his debt to her by redoubling the formal warmth of his words. The more pitiable he found her, the more he intensified the eagerness of compliment that was his atonement at once to her and to himself, that eagerness which she found so void and cold. ‘Dear pretty lady,’ he said, ‘you should never have foolish little doubts. Don’t you realize that nobody’s husband was ever so happy in the world before?’ She knew it. And she feared that she counted for nothing in that happiness of his. Her hands dropped, her voice grew chilly in its hopelessness. ‘Such a comfort--yes?’ she answered. ‘I am glad you are so happy, Kingston. I hoped you would be.’