seeing in this very inequality its opportunity. She beheld herself
superbly seated on an eminence, her spiritual opulence supplying Walter's
poverty. Spiritually, she said, it might also be more blessed to give
than to receive.

Their marriage, in this its new, its immaterial consummation, would not
be unequal. She would raise Walter. That, of course, was what God had
meant her to do all the time. Never again could she look at her husband
with eyes of mortal passion. But her love, which had died, was risen
again; it could still turn to him a glorified and spiritual face; it
could still know passion, a passion immortal and supreme.

But it was an emotion of which by its very nature she could not bring
herself to speak. It could mean nothing to Walter in his yet unspiritual
state. She felt that when he came to her he would insist on some
satisfaction, and there was no satisfaction that she could give to the
sort of claim he would make. Therefore she awaited his coming with
nervous trepidation.

He came in as if nothing had happened. He sank with every symptom of
comfortable assurance into the opposite arm-chair. And he asked no more
formidable question than, "How's your headache?"

"Better, thank you."

"That's all right."

He did not look at her, but his eyes were smiling as if at some agreeable
thought or reminiscence. He had apparently assumed that Anne had
recovered, not only from her headache, but from its cause. To Anne,