"Oh, well, then--" she said, indifferently.

"Alix, would you like to know about her?" Peter said bravely. "Her
name--and everything?"

"Oh, no, please, I'd much rather not!" she intercepted him
hastily, and after a pause she added, "Our marriage isn't the
usual marriage, in that way. I mean I'm not jealous, and I'm not
going to cry my eyes out because there was another woman--is
another woman, who meant more to you, or might have! I'm going
into it with my eyes wide open, Peter. I know you love me, and I
love you, and we both like the same things, and that's enough."

Three weeks later he remembered the moment, and asked her again.
They were in the valley house now, and a bitter storm was whirling
over the mountain. Peter's little cabin rocked to the gale, but
they were warm and comfortable beside the fire; the room was lamp-
lighted, scented by Alix's sweet single violets, white and purple,
spilling themselves from a glass bowl, and by Peter's pipe, and by
the good scent of green bay burning. The Joyces had had a happy
day, had climbed the hills under a lowering sky, had come home to
dry clothes and to cooking, for Kow was away, and had finally
shared an epicurean meal beside the fire.

Peter was wrapped in deep content; the companionship of this
normal, pretty woman, her quick words and quick laugh, her music,
her glancing, bright interest in anything and everything, was the
richest experience of his life. She had said that she would change
nothing in his home, but her clever white fingers had changed