Very gently Gundred drew herself away. Her heart was afire with gratification, but she felt that every consideration of decency, economy, and pride compelled her to conceal it. To be made cheap was the last horror that her mind could imagine; and all outward displays seemed to level her with kitchen-maids and factory-girls. ‘Don’t be so boisterous, darling,’ she remonstrated, while her heart longed to thank him for what he had done, and beg him to do it again. In the daytime, however, the invisible audience before whom she lived forbade these manifestations; only under the cover of darkness could she feel them permissible. ‘It is too early in the day,’ said Gundred, patting into place a curl that had never been out of it. Not for the first time Kingston sighed and found himself baffled by his wife’s perpetual assumption of virginity. Beyond the reach of all allowed caresses, her soul remained untouched, immaculate. The bloodless chastity of temperament that invested this last of Queen Isabel’s offspring was for ever a barrier between man and wife. And neither Kingston nor Gundred had any doubt as to whether the barrier were natural or artificial. Both believed it an essential part of Gundred’s nature. If Gundred herself ever doubted, she stifled the doubt as ill-bred, repulsive, almost irreligious. ‘Ice-house!’ cried Kingston. ‘One may kiss your lips, but the real you is far away beyond the reach of kisses.’ Gundred knew that this was not true, longed to deny it, yet was glad that her husband thought it. She was taking a shamefaced, almost fierce delight in the dialogue. For once her correct coldness had proved a challenge. Too often she had grieved that the low temperature of her behaviour was passing unregretted, unnoticed, and was even beginning to lower the temperature of her lover. Cold she still wished to be, for pride and decorum, yet without paying any of the penalties. The personal intimacy that one aspect of marriage enforces only the more impelled her soul, for the sake of its stiff self-respect, to take refuge in all possible mental reservations and seclusions, by way of indemnifying itself and justifying itself for the other candours into which Nature had driven her, not unwilling, indeed, but always feeling that she ought to be unwilling. Gundred’s temperament was civilized very far below the surface, and the rough facts of life never ceased to strike her as monstrous and barbaric. And most barbarous of all was her own surprised acquiescence. She could only recapture her vanishing dignity by emphasizing at every possible moment the immaculate maidenhood of her mind. This was at once her revenge on Nature, and on herself for loving what Nature sent. But her husband could not understand these subtleties; no clue was given him to the labyrinth of Gundred’s hidden emotions; he took her at her face-value, and imagined her as deeply, incurably frigid as was the manner that she thought proper to assume.