But he had something, the
subtle Celt; he had horizons, lifted lines beyond the
common vision, and an eye rapt and a heart intrepid; and
though for a long time he was unconscious of it, he must
have adventured there with a happier confidence because
of her companionship.
From the first Advena knew no faltering or fluttering,
none of the baser nervous betrayals. It was all one great
delight to her, her discovery and her knowledge and her
love for him. It came to her almost in a logical
development; it found her grave, calm, and receptive.
She had even a private formula of gratitude that the
thing which happened to everybody, and happened to so
many people irrelevantly, should arrive with her in such
a glorious defensible, demonstrable sequence. Toward him
it gave her a kind of glad secret advantage; he was loved
and he was unaware. She watched his academic awkwardness
in church with the inward tender smile of the eternal
habile feminine, and when they met she could have laughed
and wept over his straightened sentences and his difficult
manner, knowing how little significant they were. With
his eyes upon her and his words offered to her intelligence,
she found herself treating his shy formality as the
convention it was, a kind of make-believe which she would
politely and kindly play up to until he should happily
forget it and they could enter upon simpler relations.
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