He had thought she was asleep, and had gone through his undressing noiselessly, with movements of angelic and elaborate gentleness that well-nigh disarmed her thought.

He was sleeping now.

She tried not to hear the sound of his placid breathing.

Only the other night, their wedding night, she had lain awake at this hour and heard it, and had turned her face towards him where he lay in the divine unconsciousness of sleep.

The childlike, huddled posture of the sleeper had then stirred her heart to an unimaginable tenderness.
Now she had got to think, to adjust a new and devastating idea to a beloved and divine belief.
Somewhere in the quiet town a church clock clanged to the dawn, and the sleeper stretched himself.