He stood before her, still holding her hands, gazing hotly into the depths of her cool eyes. But now they gave him no answering light. Shallow, clear, and cold, they met his own without a tremor. No soul looked out of them. ‘The real you,’ he repeated at last, after a long pause--‘the real you. Where is it, I wonder? Or is there any such thing? I thought once I could thaw you, but one can’t thaw an icicle unless one can get near it.’ The passion of his speech pleased her no less than the success of her own decorous hypocrisy. Now evidently she was winning the demonstrations for which she secretly hungered, and without any sacrifice of her pudicity. She drew her hands away. ‘Let me go, dear,’ she said, with mild decision. ‘You make me feel hot and rumpled. If you want to kiss me--well, I suppose I am your wife--yes?’ The tacit invitation, the unexpressed desire, were too successfully concealed by the decorous dullness of her tone. He read into it annoyance and disgust. Abruptly the flame of his mood was extinguished. He dropped her hands, so suddenly that they, not expecting any such desertion, hung limp and disappointed for a moment in the air. ‘Sorry to have bothered you,’ he said. ‘I suppose I am too rough.’ Without another word he subsided again into his chair, and fell to reading the paper. Gundred retired to her settle, feeling how glad she ought to feel thus triumphantly to have vindicated her sense of decency. But her satisfaction was hollow; her soul had received a shock when her hands had been so suddenly dropped--a nasty jarring shock such as one receives in a dream, stepping into vacancy where one had expected solid ground. Her hands fell slowly to her sides, cheated, frustrated; then set languidly about opening her letters, as if diverted from their proper use. It was a minute or two before she could concentrate her attention. In her turn she experienced something of that snubbed, humiliated sensation which she had so often inflicted on her husband. Then good training conquered personal disappointment, and she began to read. In an instant her attention was chained. ‘Kingston,’ she cried, looking up, ‘here is a letter from Isabel Darrell, of all people in the world. She wants to pay us a visit. Why, I declare,’ she added, ‘Isabel writes from London. I must say she loses no time.’ ‘Isabel Darrell?’ questioned Kingston. ‘Who is she, and what does she want with us--especially now, when we are supposed to be on our honeymoon?’