I love
him! I love him! I love him! He's all goodness and love. He believes
in me as he believes in God. I love him! How long do you think he'll
live? I love him! I love him! I love him!"
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
A SURPRISE
Mavis spoke truly. She loved her husband, although with a different
love from that which she had known for Perigal. She had adored the
father of her child with her soul and with her body, but in her
affection for her husband there was no trace of physical passion, of
which she had no small share. This new-born love was, in truth, an
immense maternal devotion which seemed to satisfy an insistent
longing of her being.
Upon the day of their wedding, Mavis was already wondering if she
were beginning to love Harold; but for all this uncertainty, she
believed that if the marriage were to be a physical as well as a
civil union, she would have confessed before the ceremony took place
her previous intimacy with Perigal. After the marriage, the holy
fervour with which Harold had regarded Mavis bewildered her. The
more his nature was revealed to her, the better she was enabled to
realise the cold-blooded brutality with which the supreme Power
(Mavis's thoughts did not run so easily in the direction of a
Heavenly Father as was once their wont) had permanently mutilated
Harold's life, which had been of the rarest promise.
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