been able. Then, forgetful of the decency and the decorum which she had
at first imposed upon herself never to run upon all fours, she followed
him everywhere, and if he did one thing wrong she stopped him and showed
him the way of it. When he had forgot the hour for his meal she would
come and tug his sleeve and tell him as if she spoke: "Husband, are we
to have no luncheon to-day?"

This womanliness in her never failed to delight him, for it showed she
was still his wife, buried as it were in the carcase of a beast but with
a woman's soul. This encouraged him so much that he debated with himself
whether he should not read aloud to her, as he often had done formerly.
At last, since he could find no reason against it, he went to the shelf
and fetched down a volume of the "History of Clarissa Harlowe," which he
had begun to read aloud to her a few weeks before. He opened the volume
where he had left off, with Lovelace's letter after he had spent the
night waiting fruitlessly in the copse.

"Good God!

"What is now to become of me?

"My feet benumbed by midnight wanderings through the heaviest dews
that ever fell; my wig and my linen dripping with the hoarfrost
dissolving on them!

"Day but just breaking...." etc.

While he read he was conscious of holding her attention, then after a
few pages the story claimed all his, so that he read on for about
half-an-hour without looking at her. When he did so he saw that she was