"I loved you," she said, "from the first moment when you came into the Smallmans' drawing-room. I was wearing green. Do you remember?" "Green. Yes. I remember. I saw your parasol in the hall." "And you loved me from the moment when you saw my parasol." She laughed. That was better. It broke the heavy brooding in him that had brought him to such suspense. The evening air chilled them, and they walked home under the stars. She clung to him and sang ditties of love and trysts and sentimental disasters. When they reached their sitting-room she came to him and placed her hand under his chin, pressed his lips with her forefinger, and then kissed him. Then she left him. In the early hours of the morning he was out on the seashore, wandering aimlessly, nervously, dejectedly. Every now and then he threw up his head and took in a great draught of the keen morning air blowing in from the sea. That invigorated, cleansed him. Suddenly he crouched on the sands and hid his face in his hands, and cried within himself: "I can't go on. I can't go back. Oh, Love, my love." He had counted on her to open up new wonders and sweet joys, and together they had attained nothing but heat and hunger and distress. XI MATRIMONY Hear me, auld Hangie, for a wee, An' let poor damned bodies be: I'm sure sma' pleasure it can gie Ev'n to a deil To skelp and scaud poor dogs like me An' hear us squeal. HE returned to her. She was in dressing-gown, fresh, indolent, gay. She held out her hand to him. "What a strange man you are! Couldn't you sleep?" "No. I couldn't sleep. "Poor old thing. I slept wonderfully." Had she felt nothing? Had she no suspicion of the agony that had driven him from her side? Of the sick hope of comfort and reassurance that had brought him back to her? A faint shadow of fear had crossed her face on his entrance, but it had vanished when he spoke. Indeed he was reassured. Her gaiety and charm disarmed him. The sun came streaming through the window upon her hair; her eyes danced; she glowed in her health and physical well-being. He had no other creature to whom to turn. Under the spell of her radiance he appealed to her, who had wounded him, to repair the hurt. She petted him, made much of him, denied him the relief of activity, and had him to sit with her in the heather with his head in her lap while she crooned to him of how happy she was, and how proud a wife, and how this honeymoon would never come to an end. There was a drugging beauty in her voice that soothed him and had him dwelling in a honeyed sleep. It was sweet to lie in the sun and gaze through half-closed lids at the pale sky and stifle the voices of hostility that stirred in him at her touch, at the caressing notes in her voice, at her perpetual drone of contented triumph. She allowed him silence, but then only the more keenly could he feel her presence. She would sigh out of it: