night,--something to be endured forgivingly, but feared, almost hated for
its fierce invasion of her. If her husband could only take her as
companion,--the deep, deep friend, the first and best for the long journey
of life! Perhaps some day that would content him; perhaps this flower of
passion came only at first, to be subdued by the work of life. She never
dreamed that some day she herself might change, might be waked by passion.
And yet she knew that she loved her husband, yearned to give him all that
he desired. Taking his face between her hands, she would kiss it gently,
tenderly, as a mother might kiss a hot, impulsive child trying to still a
restless spirit within.

This mystery of passion! It swept over the man, transfiguring him as the
summer storm swept across the little lake, blackening the sky with shadows
through which the lightning played fearsomely. She saw this face hot with
desire of her, as the face of a stranger,--another one than the strong,
self-contained man she had married,--a face with strange animal and
spiritual depths in it, all mixed and vivified. It was the brute, she said
to herself, and feared. Brute and God lie close together; but she could not
see the God,--felt only the fury of the brute.

Like the storm it passed off, leaving him as she loved him, her tender and
worshipping husband. It never entered her thought that she might love any
man more than she loved him, that perhaps some day she would long for a
passion to meet her own heart. She saw now no lack in her cold limbs, her
hard lips, her passionless eyes. She was still Diana,--long, shapely,
muscular. In her heart she loved this Diana self, so aloof from desire!

The last night of their stay in the mountains she revolved all these things
in her mind as they lay side by side on their fir couch, he asleep in a
deep, dreamless fatigue, she alert and tense after the long day in the