etly and pitifully: "Dear, I know what people
suffer--what lonely hearts endure. I think I understand what you have
been through."

"I know you understand! Fool that I am who enlightened you. But yours
was the injury of bruised faith--the suffering caused by outrage. No
hell of self-contempt set _you_ crawling about the world in agony; no
despicable self-knowledge drove _you_ out into the waste places. Yours
was the sorrow of a self-respecting victim; mine the grief of the
damned fool who has done to death all that he ever loved for the love
of expediency and of self!"

"Clive!--"

"That's what I am!" he interrupted fiercely, "a damned fool! I don't
know what else I am, but I can't live without you, and I won't!"

She said: "You told me that being in love with me would not make you
unhappy. So I told you to love me. I was wrong to let you do it."

"You darling! I am more than happy!"

"It was a dreadful mistake, Clive! I shouldn't have let you."

"Do you think you could have stopped me?"

"I don't know. Couldn't I? I've stopped other men.... I shouldn't have
let you. But it was so delightful--to be really loved by _you_! All my
pride responded. It seemed to dignify everything; it seemed to make me
really a woman, with a place among other women--to be loved by such a
man as you ... and I was _not_ selfish about it; I did ask you whether
it would make you unhappy to be in love with me. Oh, I see now that I
was very wrong, Clive--very foolish, very wrong! Because it _is_
making you restless and unhappy--"

"If you could only love me a little in return!"

"I don't know how to love you except the way I am doing--"

"There is a more vital emotion--"

"It seems impossible that I could care for you more deeply than I
do."

"If you could only respond with a little tenderness--"

"I _do_ respond--as well as I know how," she said piteously.

He drew her nearer and touched her cheek with his lips:

"I know, dear. I don't mean to complain."

"Oh, Clive! I have let you fall in love with me and it is making you
miserable! And now it's making me miserable, too, because you are
disappointed in me."

"No--"

"You are! I'm not what you expected--not what you wanted--"

"You are everything I want!--if I could only wake your heart!" he said
in a low tense voice.

"It isn't my heart that is asleep.... I know what you miss in me....
And I can't help it. I--I don't wish to help it--or to be different."

She dropped