[MAGGIE shivers a little.]

MAGGIE. He loves to think he does it all himself; that's the way of
men. I'm six years older than he is. I'm plain, and I have no charm.
I shouldn't have let him marry me. I'm trying to make up for it.

[The COMTESSE kisses her and goes away. MAGGIE, somewhat foolishly,
resumes her knitting.]

[Some days later this same room is listening--with the same
inattention--to the outpouring of JOHN SHAND's love for the lady of
the hiccoughs. We arrive--by arrangement--rather late; and thus we
miss some of the most delightful of the pangs.

One can see that these two are playing no game, or, if they are, that
they little know it. The wonders of the world [so strange are the
instruments chosen by Love] have been revealed to JOHN in hiccoughs;
he shakes in SYBIL's presence; never were more swimming eyes; he who
has been of a wooden face till now, with ways to match, has gone on
flame like a piece of paper; emotion is in flood in him. We may be
almost fond of JOHN for being so worshipful of love. Much has come to
him that we had almost despaired of his acquiring, including nearly
all the divine attributes except that sense of humour. The beautiful
SYBIL has always possessed but little of it also, and what she had
has been struck from her by Cupid's flail. Naked of the saving grace,
they face each other in awful rapture.]

JOHN. In a room, Sybil, I go to you as a cold man to a fire. You fill
me like a peal of bells in an empty house.