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 great deal of experience, by which she had profited, her way. That was the explanation of her comparatively youthful appearance.

Her comparatively youthful appearance! How old was she? Gareth recalled her touched-up hair, the enamelling of her face, her well-rounded figure, the figure of maturity, the puffs and lines under her eyes. How little, for what he for the moment wanted, this mattered, after all. He was not searching for a slender, young girl, not, for instance, for Clara Barnes. He was not considering what he might do for a wife; in thinking of marriage, and he included the idea of marriage with the Countess within the range of possibility, he weighed in his mind what a wife might do for him. The Countess could do everything, everything, that is, that he wanted. She had it in her power to reveal to him all that his imagination had taught him about art, life, and the world in general. In the beginning, she could perform the initial service of freeing him from the environment which until now had stifled him, take him away from this cursed town for ever, to set him down in a milieu where he might expand and grow. To this end he was willing to make some primary sacrifices in the matter of taste.

There had not, he recalled, passed one word of love between them. That had been suggested rather than spoken, and suggested only by the Countess. At such moments, always on his guard,