But--but might it not be misunderstood ?" She bent her head over her work, and one of those instants passed between them which he had learned to dread.

They were so completely the human pair as they sat together, withdrawn in comfort and shelter, absorbed in homely matters and in each other; it was easy to forget that they were only a picture, a sham, and that the reality lay further on, in the early spring.

It must have been hard for him to hear without resentment that she was ready to help him to make a home for that reality.

He was fast growing instructed in women, although by a post-graduate course.
Advena looked up.

"Possibly," she said, calmly, and their agitation lay still between them.