fortified, and that this was the true and secret source of his delight.  He lay down in a scoop of the stones.  The sun entered there, but no wind, so that a dry sweet scent exuded from the young shoots of heather.  That warmth and perfume crept through the shield of his spirit, and stole into his blood; ardent images rose before him, the vision of an unending embrace.  Out of an embrace sprang Life, out of that the World was made, this World, with its innumerable forms, and natures—­no two alike!  And from him and her would spring forms to take their place in the great pattern.  This seemed wonderful, and right-for they would be worthy forms, who would hand on those traditions which seemed to him so necessary and great.  And then there broke on him one of those delirious waves of natural desire, against which he had so often fought, so often with great pain conquered.  He got up, and ran downhill, leaping over the stones, and the thicker clumps of heather.

Audrey Noel, too, had been early astir, though she had gone late enough to bed.  She dressed languidly, but very carefully, being one of those women who put on armour against Fate, because they are proud, and dislike the thought that their sufferings should make others suffer; because, too, their bodies are to them as it were sacred, having been given them in trust, to cause delight.  When she had finished, she looked at herself in the glass rather more distrustfully than usual.  She felt that her sort of woman was at a discount in these days, and being sensitive, she was never content either with her appearance, or her habits.  But, for all that, she went on behaving in unsatisfactory ways, because she incorrigibly loved to look as charming as she could; and even if no one were going to see her, she never felt that she looked charming enough.  She was—­as Lady Casterley had shrewdly guessed—­the kind of woman who spoils men by being too nice to them; of no use to those who wish women to assert themselves; yet having a certain passive stoicism, very disconcerting.  With little or no power of initiative, she would do what she was set to do with a thoroughness that would shame an initiator; temperamentally unable to beg anything of anybody, she required love as a plant requires water; she could give herself completely, yet remain oddly incorruptible; in a word, hopeless, and usually beloved of those who thought her so.

With all this, however, she was not quite what is called a ’sweet woman—­a phrase she detested—­for there was in her a queer vein of gentle cynicism.  She ‘saw’ with extraordinary clearness, as if she had been born in Italy and still carried that clear dry atmosphere about her soul.  She loved glow and warmth and colour; such mysticism as she felt was pagan; and she had few aspirations—­sufficient to her were things as they showed themselves to be.

This morning, when she had made herself smell of geraniums, and fastened all the small contrivances that hold even the best of women together, she went downstairs to her little dining-room, set the spirit lamp going, and taking up her newspaper, stood waiting to make tea.