They were standing at the window, with his arm round her shoulder. There was just room for them between it and the writing-table. Outside was the flagged terrace, and then a very green lawn with worms and blackbirds on it and a flagged path down the middle leading to a little iron gate. There was no willow hedge along the river end of the square garden, so as not to interrupt the view,--only the iron railings and wire-netting. Terra-cotta vases, which later on would be a blaze of geraniums, Wemyss explained, stood at intervals on each side of the path. The river, swollen and brown, slid past Wemyss's frontage very quickly that day, for there had been much rain. The clouds scudding across the sky before the wind were not in such a hurry but that every now and then they let loose a violent gust of rain, soaking the flags of the terrace again just as the wind had begun to dry them up. How could he stand there, she thought, holding her tight so that she couldn't get away, making her look out at the very place on those flags not two yards off.... But the next minute she thought how right he really was, how absolutely the only way this was to do the thing. Perfect simplicity was the one way to meet this situation successfully; and she herself was so far from simplicity that here she was shrinking, not able to bear to look, wanting only to hide her face,--oh, he was wonderful, and she was the most ridiculous of fools. She pressed very close to him, and put up her face to his, shutting her eyes, for so she shut out the desolating garden with its foreground of murderous flags. 'What is it, little Love?' asked Wemyss. 'Kiss me,' she said; and he laughed and kissed her, but hastily, because he wanted her to go on admiring the view. She still, however, held up her face. 'Kiss my eyes,' she whispered, keeping them shut. 'They're tired----' He laughed again, but with a slight impatience, and kissed her eyes; and then, suddenly struck by her little blind face so close to his, the strong light from the big window showing all its delicate curves and delicious softnesses, his Lucy's face, his own little wife's, he kissed her really, as she loved him to kiss her, becoming absorbed only in his love. 'Oh, I love you, love you----' murmured Lucy, clinging to him, making secret vows of sensibleness, of wholesomeness, of a determined, unfailing future simplicity. 'Aren't we happy,' he said, pausing in his kisses to gaze down at what was now his face, for was it not much more his than hers? Of course it was his. She never saw it, except when she specially went to look, but he saw it all the time; she only had duties in regard to it, but he was on the higher plane of only having joys. She washed it, but he kissed it. And he kissed it when he liked and as much as ever he liked. 'Isn't it wonderful being married,' he said, gazing down at this delightful thing that was his very own for ever. 'Oh--wonderful!' murmured Lucy, opening her eyes and gazing into his.