his own torments struck him as supremely interesting
and queer; but this was not precisely a relief, for it only meant, as in
prolonged toothache, that his power of feeling had for a moment ceased.
A very pretty little hell indeed!

All day he had the premonition, amounting to certainty, that Nell would
take alarm at those three words he had sent her, and come in spite of
them. And yet, what else could he have written? Nothing save what must
have alarmed her more, or plunged him deeper. He had the feeling that
she could follow his moods, that her eyes could see him everywhere, as a
cat's eyes can see in darkness. That feeling had been with him, more or
less, ever since the last evening of October, the evening she came back
from her summer--grown-up. How long ago? Only six days--was it
possible? Ah, yes! She knew when her spell was weakening, when the
current wanted, as it were, renewing. And about six o'clock--dusk
already--without the least surprise, with only a sort of empty quivering,
he heard her knock. And just behind the closed door, as near as he could
get to her, he stood, holding his breath. He had given his word to
Sylvia--of his own accord had given it. Through the thin wood of the old
door he could hear the faint shuffle of her feet on the pavement, moved a
few inches this way and that, as though supplicating the inexorable
silence. He seemed to see her head, bent a little forward listening.
Three times she knocked, and each time Lennan writhed. It was so cruel!
With that seeing-sense of hers she must know he was there; his very
silence would be telling her--for his silence had its voice, its pitiful
breathless sound. Then, quite distinctly, he heard her sigh, and her
footsteps move away; and covering his face with his hands he rushed to
and fro in the studio, like a madman.

No sound of her any more! Gone! It was unbearable; and, seizing his
hat, he ran out. Which way? At random he ran towards the Square. There
she was, over by the railings; languidly, irresolutely moving towards
home.

XIV

But now that she was within reach, he wavered; he had given his word--was
he going to break it? Then she turned, and saw him; and he could not go
back. In the biting easterly wind her face looked small, and pinched,
and cold, but her eyes only the larger, the more full of witchery, as if
beseeching him not to be angry, not to send her away.

"I had to come; I got frightened. Why did you write