He watched her slow progress--the gradual taming of that woman by the words of his love.

It was the monotonous song of praise and desire that, commencing at creation, wraps up the world like an atmosphere and shall end only in the end of all things--when there are no lips to sing and no ears to hear.

He told her that she was beautiful and desirable, and he repeated it again and again; for when he told her that, he had said all there was within him--he had expressed his only thought, his only feeling.

And he watched the startled look of wonder and mistrust vanish from her face with the passing days, her eyes soften, the smile dwell longer and longer on her lips; a smile as of one charmed by a delightful dream; with the slight exaltation of intoxicating triumph lurking in its dawning tenderness.
And while she was near there was nothing in the whole world--for that idle man--but her look and her smile.

Nothing in the past, nothing in the future; and in the present only the luminous fact of her existence.
But in the sudden darkness of her going he would be left weak and helpless, as though despoiled violently of all that was himself.