He imaged her beauty and her talent with pride which made his veins warmer.

Her husband, he would be loyal to his last breath.

Community of life would establish that intimate alliance of heart and soul which every year makes more enduring.

Were they not young flesh and blood, he and she?
And could a bodiless ghost come between them, a mere voice of long-vanished time, insubstantial, unseizable, as the murmur in these chestnut-leaves?
He grew tired of the attitude which at first had been reposeful, and rose to wander further.

Someone else, it seemed, had been tempted to this quiet corner, away from the road; a woman was walking at a little distance, and reading as she walked.