"Bin ich eine hubsche?" she asked like one who repeats a lesson.

I was moved to crave her pardon and come away.

"Bin ich eine hubsche?" she asked a little anxiously, laying a
detaining hand upon me, and evidently not understanding a word of
what I was striving to say.



8


I find it extraordinarily difficult to recall the phases by which I
passed from my first admiration of Margaret's earnestness and
unconscious daintiness to an intimate acquaintance. The earlier
encounters stand out clear and hard, but then the impressions become
crowded and mingle not only with each other but with all the
subsequent developments of relationship, the enormous evolutions of
interpretation and comprehension between husband and wife. Dipping
into my memories is like dipping into a ragbag, one brings out this
memory or that, with no intimation of how they came in time or what
led to them and joined them together. And they are all mixed up
with subsequent associations, with sympathies and discords, habits
of intercourse, surprises and disappointments and discovered
misunderstandings. I know only that always my feelings for Margaret
were complicated feelings, woven of many and various strands.

It is one of the curious neglected aspects of life how at the same