Now her husband never kissed her that she would not have given
worlds to feel that his were the only lover's lips which had ever touched
hers; he never called her by one tender name that she did not shiver to
think she had ever heard it from any other man. There was coming into
her that sense of awed self-appropriation, that fierce revulsion from any
intrusion on the same, which comes into any woman's nature when
beginning to love as she is beloved. Christian did not as yet; but she
recognized her husband's love, and it penetrated with a strong
sweetness to her inmost soul. Mingled with it was an acute pain, a
profound regret, a sad humility. Not hers, alas! the joyful pride, the
full content, of a heart which is conscious in its sweetest depths that
it gives as much as it receives.
This was all. She had done nothing wrong, nothing unworthy of either
herself or Dr. Grey; nothing but what hundreds of women do every day,
and neither blame themselves nor are blamed by others. She had but
suffered a new footstep to enter her young life's garden, without having
had the courage to say of one little corner in it, "Do not tread there,
it is a grave." Only a grave; a very harmless grave now, tricked with
innocent, girlish flowers, but still containing the merest handful of dust.
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