Thus they sat: she silent with new thoughts; he speechless with his
old ones. Again she was the first to speak. More deeply moved by
the sight of his increasing excitement, she took one of his hands
into both of hers, pressing it with a delicate tenderness.

"What is it that troubles you, Rowan? Tell me! It is my duty to
listen. I have the right to know."

He shrank from what he had never heard in her voice
before--disappointment in him. And it was neither girlhood nor
womanhood which had spoken now: it was comradeship which is
possible to girlhood and to womanhood through wifehood alone: she
was taking their future for granted. He caught her hand and lifted
it again and again to his lips; then he turned away from her.

Thus shut out from him again, she sat looking out into the night.

But in a woman's complete love of a man there is something deeper
than girlhood or womanhood or wifehood: it is the maternal--that
dependence on his strength when he is well and strong, that passion
of protection and defence when he is frail or stricken. Into her
mood and feeling toward him even the maternal had forced its way.
She would have found some expression for it but he anticipated her.

"I am thinking of you, of my duty to you, of your happiness."

She realized at last some terrible hidden import in all that he had
been trying to confess. A shrouded mysterious Shape of Evil was
suddenly disclosed as already standing on the threshold of the
House of Life which they were about to enter together. The night