A letter from her, he would lay aside unopened until he had finished what he evidently regarded as more important business.

When boudoir and engine- shed became rivals, it was the boudoir that had to wait.
"The woman chafed under his self-control, which stung her like a lash, but clung to him the more abjectly.
"'Tell me you love me!' she would cry fiercely, stretching her white arms towards him.
"'I have told you so,' he would reply calmly, without moving.
"'I want to hear you tell it me again,' she would plead with a voice that trembled on a sob.

'Come close to me and tell it me again, again, again!' "Then, as she lay with half-closed eyes, he would pour forth a flood of passionate words sufficient to satisfy even her thirsty ears, and afterwards, as the gates clanged behind him, would take up an engineering problem at the exact point at which half an hour before, on her entrance into the room, he had temporarily dismissed it.
"One day, a privileged friend put bluntly to him this question: 'Are you playing for love or vanity ?' "To which the man, after long pondering, gave this reply: ''Pon my soul, Jack, I couldn't tell you.' "Now, when a man is in love with a woman who cannot make up her mind whether she loves him or not, we call the complication comedy; where it is the woman who is in earnest the result is generally tragedy.
"They continued to meet and to make love.

They talked--as people in their position are prone to talk--of the beautiful life they would lead if it only were not for the thing that was; of the earthly paradise--or, maybe, 'earthy' would be the more suitable adjective--they would each create for the other, if only they had the right which they hadn't.
"In this work of imagination the man trusted chiefly to his literary faculties, which were considerable; the woman to her desires.

Thus, his scenes possessed a grace and finish which hers lacked, but her pictures were the more vivid.