He turned abruptly from that graceless thought: it was a great deal
warmer, and a mist, curiously tangible in the night, was rising through
the bare branches of the maple trees.
"I am going to talk to Claire," Fanny said firmly.
"It would do both of you no good," he informed her; "besides, you'll
have to take so much for granted."
"Claire will tell me."
"I wonder?" They were in their room, preparing for bed; Fanny, with her
hair spread in a thin brown tide over the chaste shoulders of her
nightgown, was incredibly like a girl. The mechanical sweep of her hand
with a brush kept a brief sleeve falling back from the thinness of her
arm. How delicately methodical she was--an indispensable quality in the
repeated trying contacts, the lost privacy, of marriage. So much
depended upon the very elusiveness which the security of possession,
habit, destroyed.
"This love," he continued his speculations aloud, "isn't at all
understood--we are ignorant about it in spite of endless experience and
reports and poetry. Take us," he had one of his dangerous impulses of
complete honesty, "before we were married, while we were engaged, we
had an impracticable romantic attraction for each other. I know that I
thought of you all the time, day and night; and, just because you
existed, the whole world was full of prismatic colors; it was as though
an orchestra were playing continually and I were floating on the finest
music.
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