grief, and the exile, of her mother.  She esteemed that she knew what life was, and that it was grim.  And she sighed.  But the sigh was an affectation, meant partly to convince herself that she was grown-up, and partly to keep her in countenance in the intimidating bed.  This melancholy was factitious, was less than transient foam on the deep sea of her joy.  Death and sorrow and sin were dim shapes to her; the ruthless egoism of happiness blew them away with a puff, and their wistful faces vanished.  To see her there in the bed, framed in mahogany and tassels, lying on her side, with her young glowing cheeks, and honest but not artless gaze, and the rich curve of her hip lifting the counterpane, one would have said that she had never heard of aught but love.

Mr. Povey entered, the bridegroom, quickly, firmly, carrying it off rather well, but still self-conscious.  “After all,” his shoulders were trying to say, “what’s the difference between this bedroom and the bedroom of a boarding-house?  Indeed, ought we not to feel more at home here?  Besides, confound it, we’ve been married a fortnight!”

“Doesn’t it give you a funny feeling, sleeping in this room?  It does me,” said Constance.  Women, even experienced women, are so foolishly frank.  They have no decency, no self-respect.

“Really?” replied Mr. Povey, with loftiness, as who should say:  “What an extraordinary thing that a reasonable creature can have such fancies!  Now to me this room is exactly like any other room.”  And he added aloud, glancing away from the glass, where he was unfastening his necktie:  “It’s not a bad room at all.”  This, with the judicial air of an auctioneer.

Not for an instant did he deceive Constance, who read his real sensations with accuracy.  But his futile poses did not in the slightest degree lessen her respect for him.  On the contrary, she admired him the more for them; they were a sort of embroidery on the solid stuff of his character.  At that period he could not do wrong for her.  The basis of her regard for him was, she often thought, his honesty, his industry, his genuine kindliness of act, his grasp of the business, his perseverance, his passion for doing at once that which had to be done.  She had the greatest admiration for his qualities, and he was in her eyes an indivisible whole; she could not admire one part of him and frown upon another.  Whatever he did was good because he did it.  She knew that some people were apt to smile at certain phases of his individuality; she knew that far down in her mother’s heart was a suspicion that she had married ever so little beneath her.  But this knowledge did not disturb her.  She had no doubt as to the correctness of her own estimate.