this immense and enduring beauty made her almost alarmingly conscious
of her desire, and at the same time proud of a feeling which did not
display anything like the same proportions when she was going about
her daily work.

She repressed her impulse to speak aloud, and rose and wandered about
rather aimlessly among the statues until she found herself in another
gallery devoted to engraved obelisks and winged Assyrian bulls, and
her emotion took another turn. She began to picture herself traveling
with Ralph in a land where these monsters were couchant in the sand.
"For," she thought to herself, as she gazed fixedly at some
information printed behind a piece of glass, "the wonderful thing
about you is that you're ready for anything; you're not in the least
conventional, like most clever men."

And she conjured up a scene of herself on a camel's back, in the
desert, while Ralph commanded a whole tribe of natives.

"That is what you can do," she went on, moving on to the next statue.
"You always make people do what you want."

A glow spread over her spirit, and filled her eyes with brightness.
Nevertheless, before she left the Museum she was very far from saying,
even in the privacy of her own mind, "I am in love with you," and that
sentence might very well never have framed itself. She was, indeed,
rather annoyed with herself for having allowed such an ill-considered
breach of her reserve, weakening her powers of resistance, she felt,
should this impulse return again. For, as she walked along the street
to her office, the force of all her customary objections to being in
love with any one overcame her. She did not want to marry at all. It