self against giving way to nervous pressure, that every time she managed a difficult interview, or flashed a ready response to some unexpected incident, he knew and estimated it as accomplishment. And nothing in her life had so warmed her, had so stimulated and fired her as that understanding.
And because it so warmed her, because her love for him was daily changing and enlarging its horizons, she could not bear to think of the cloud that she knew descended at times upon that spirit. She had gone through many a tragic hour since the day she had first seen her father the worse for drink. But she had become philosophical about him. She knew well enough that during the process he had died to her as the father of her childhood, and had come to light in a new form as the product of perverted idealisms. And there had come a time when she could even look upon him drunk without emotion. But she knew she would never get to that stage with Dane. Then she told herself she was being absurdly serious about it. That after all, occasional excess need not be allowed to overshadow their love for each other. That she simply must not allow it to. She had known all along of his habits. And she was committed to him now in spite of them.
Unexpectedly a peace descended upon her, as something in the spring night wrought its magic within her. She had worried herself into fevers many times over the reason for what she saw about her. She had put her despairing Whys to the impotent stars, but she had struggled through to one dominant perception, the existence of beauty in manifold forms, and the more she sought it, the more she let herself go out to it, the more she found it everywhere. And she knew that it was for that that Dane lived too.
