In that chilly twilight, with the white mist rising around them, everything seemed so phantasmal, that this surprising observation gave him no kind of shock. But he did remember how startled he had felt when Christie Malakite introduced the same idea.

“I wonder how I should feel married to you !” murmured Wolf in response, deliberately putting a nuance of irresponsible lightness into his tone.

“I think we’d get on splendidly,” she retorted, with an emphasis that was more boyish than girlish. They walked for a while in silence after this, and Wolf became vividly aware how completely a definite responsible project of such a kind tended to break the delicious spell of carefree intimacy. It broke it for him, anyway. But it must have been just the reverse with her. The beauty of the situation with her evidently had to find its justification in some continuity of events beyond the mere pleasure of the passing moment.