have taught me that
I have as much sentiment and more than other men, a heart and desires
which have made life sometimes hell and sometimes paradise. For two
years I have struggled. Life with me has been a sort of passionate
compromise. For the joy of seeing you sometimes, of listening to you and
watching you, I have borne the agony of having you leave me to take your
place with another man. You don't quite know what that meant, and I am
not going to tell you, but always I have hoped and hoped."

"And now," she said, looking at him, "I owe you four thousand pounds and
you think, perhaps, that your time has come to speak?"

He shivered as though she had struck him a blow.

"You think," he exclaimed, "that I am a man of pounds, shillings, and
pence! Is it my fault that you owe me money?"

He snatched her cheques from his inner pocket and ripped them in pieces,
lit a match and watched them while they smouldered away. She, too,
watched with emotionless face.

"Do you think that I want to buy you?" he demanded. "There! You are free
from your money claims. You can leave my room this moment, if you will,
and owe me nothing."

She made no movement, yet he was vaguely disturbed by a sense of having
made but little progress, a terrible sense of impending failure. His
fingers began to tremble, his face was the face of a man stretched upon
the rack.

"Perhaps those words of mine were false," he went on. "Perhaps, in a
sense, I do want to buy you, buy the little kindnesses that go with
affection, buy your kind words, the touch sometimes of your fingers, the
pleasant sense of companionship I feel when I am with you. I know how
proud you are. I know how virtuous you are. I know that it's there in
your blood, the Puritan instinct, the craving for the one man to whom
you have given yourself, the involuntary shrinking from the touch of any
other. Good women are like that--wives or mistresses. Mind, in a sense
it's narrow; in a sense it's splendid. Listen to me. I don't want to
declare war against that instinct--yet. I can't. Perhaps, even now, I
have spoken too soon, craved too soon for the little I do ask. Yet God
knows I can keep the seal upon my lips no longer! Don't let us
misunderstand one another for the sake of using plain words. I am not
asking you to be my mistress. I ask you, on my knees, to take from me
what makes life brighter for you. I ask you for the other things
only--for your confidence, for your affection, your