throat, he lifting his head to receive it as it came. Then David
with his eyes on the ceiling felt his coat collar turned up and her
soft warm fingers tucking the comforter in around his neck. When he
looked down, she was standing over by the fireplace.

"Good night," she said positively, with a quick gesture of
dismissal as she saw the look in his eyes.

Each of the million million men who made up the past of David, that
moment reached a hand out of the distance and pushed him forward.
But of them all there was none so helpless with modesty,--so in
need of hiding from every eye,--even his own,--the sacred annals
of that moment.

He was standing by the table on which burned the candles. He bent
down quickly and blew them out and went over to her by the dim
firelight.




XIX


All high happiness has in it some element of love; all love
contains a desire for peace. One immediate effect of new happiness,
new love, is to make us turn toward the past with a wish to
straighten out its difficulties, heal its breaches, forgive its
wrongs. We think most hopefully of distressing things which may
still be remedied, most regretfully of others that have passed