But he was a person of
singular reserves, and Lilian learned nothing of such effort or
accomplishment as yet. "You think I am so perfect!" she would say.
"You have built up a great hollow idol around me, and it is like
living in a vacuum. Don't you know it is very tiresome to be chained
up to such a standard?" And John only adored her all the more for her
candor, did not believe it, and hastened home from business the
sooner.
In fact, if this home, in which they all shared, was not exactly as
they would have liked it to be, it was nevertheless a delightful place
to John Sterling. He already had a sense of proprietorship in it. He
lined its walls with books as he grew able, with prints, with now and
then a painting, with plaster till he could get marble; Lilian's ivies
clambered everywhere, and her azaleas and great lilies seemed to have
a secret of perpetual flowering; a bright fire cast rosy lights and
shadows over it all; and John would declare, as he sank into his
easy-chair in the half twilight and surveyed the warm place, which
seemed only a ruddy background for Lilian's fairness, that he never
wanted anything better than this as long as he lived. It hurt him
sometimes, though, to remember that Lilian never made any response to
such words. "Well, well," he would say to himself in a way he had,
"why should she? and why should I expect it of her? If people are born
with wings, they do not want to creep.
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