intimacy of marriage so shone in his eyes. And he was going to have
just the amount of intimacy that his mother would have, perhaps rather
less. Every night he would stand on the threshold, kiss Hazel with a
brotherly kiss, and turn away. His life would be a cold threshold. Month
by month, year by year, he would read the sweet, frank love-stories of
the Bible--stories that would, if written by a novelist, be banned, so
true are they; year by year he would see nest and young creatures, and go
into cottages where babies in fluffy shawls gazed at him anciently and
caught his fingers in a grip of tyrannous weakness. And always there
would be Hazel, alluring him with an imperishable magic even stronger
than beauty, startling him from his hard-won calm by the turn of a
wrist, the curve of a waist-ribbon, a wave of her hair. And then the
stern hour of crisis rode him down, and a great voice cried, not with
the cunning that he would have expected of a temper, but with the
majesty of morning on the heights:

'Take her. She is yours.'

He knew that it was true. Who would gainsay him? She was his. In a few
hours she would be his wife, in his own house, giving him every law of
creed and race. In fact, by not pleasing himself he would be outraging
creed and race. The latch of her door was his to lift at any time. That
chamber of roses and gold, rainbows and silver cries like the dawn-notes
of birds, was there for him like the open rose for the bee. His mother,
too, would be pleased. She had expostulated gelatinously about 'this
marriage which was no marriage.' He would be that companionable and
inspiring thing--the norm. He would be one of the world-wide company
of men that work, marry, bring up children, maybe see their grandchildren,
and then, in the glory of fulfilment, lay their silver heads on the
pillow of sleep. He had always loved normal things. He was not one