He visited them often during the first months of their marriage. People who knew them said their union was an ideal one; and, for once, people were right. Unconscious impulses were tempering, acting, counteracting each other, inevitably working towards the moulding of these two into the ideal “one” of the poets’ dreams.
Graham, when he was with them, watched them stealthily, with a certain cat-like intensity which, had they been less occupied with each other, they might have noticed and resented. It was always with a temporary relief he quitted them; a feeling of thankfulness that the lighted fuse had not yet reached the dynamite in the cellar. But the torture of uncertainty became almost unbearable and once or twice he went to them with the full intention of removing the suggestion; to see what would happen, and have done with it. But the sight of their content, their mutual sympathy, palsied his resolution, and he left as he had gone to them, the prey of doubt and sharp uneasiness.
One day Graham reasoned it all out with himself. The state of worry in which he lived had become unbearable. He determined to that evening, remove the suggestion which he had fixed upon Faverham six months before. If he found that he could do so, then it would easily follow that he could again renew it, if he thought best. But if the disillusion had to come finally to Faverham, why not have it come now, at once, at the outset of their married life, before Pauline had too firmly taken the habit of loving and while he, Graham, might still hold enough of the old influence to offer a balm to her intellect and her imagination if not to her heart. Graham, that night, realized more keenly than ever the change which Pauline had undergone. He looked at her often as they sat at table, unable to define what was yet so apparent. She was a pretty woman now. There was color in her face whose contour was softened and embellished by a peculiarly happy arrangement of her brown hair. The pince-nez which she had substituted for the rather formidable spectacles, while depriving her face somewhat of its former student-air, lent it a piquancy that was very attractive. Her gown was rich as her husband’s purse could buy and its colors were marvelously soft, indefinable, harmonious, making of the garment a distinct part of herself and her surroundings.
