in love with it for any other reason,
because she's an egoist."

"No. There you're quite wrong. That's what she isn't."

"Oh, you _are_ in love with her. Of course she's an egoist. All the
nicest women are. I'm an egoist myself. Do you love me less for it?"

"I don't love you less for anything."

"Well--unless you can make Anne jealous of me--and you can't--you've got
to love me less, now, dear boy. That's where I come in--to be kept out of
it."

She had led him breathless on her giddy round; she plunged him back into
bewilderment. He hadn't a notion where she was taking him to, where they
would come out; but there was a desperate delight in the impetuous
journey, the wind of her sudden flight lifted him and carried him on. He
had always trusted the marvellous inspirations of her heart. She had
failed him once; but now he could not deny that she had given him lights,
and he looked for a stupendous illumination at the end of the way.

"Out of it!" he exclaimed. "Why, where should I have been without you?
You were the beginning of it."

"I was indeed. You've got to take care I'm not the end of it, that's
all."

"What on earth do you mean?"

"I mean what I say. You don't want Anne to be in love with you for _my_
sake, do you?"

"N--no. I don't know that I do exactly. At least I should prefer that she
was in love with me for my own."

"Well, you must make her, then. That's why you've got to leave me out of
it. I've been too much in it all along. It was through me she conceived
that unfortunate idea of your goodness. I'm its father and its mother and
its nurse, I ministered to it every hour. I fed it, I brought it up, I
brought it _out_, I provided all the opportunity for its display. Nothing
else had a show beside your goodness, Wallie dear. It was something
monstrous. It took Anne's affection from you and concentrated it all on
itself. She worshipped it, she clung to it, she saw nothing else but it,
and when it went everything went. _You_ went first of all. Well, you must
just see that that doesn't happen again."

"You mean that I must lead a life of iniquity?"

"You mustn't lead a life of anything."

"Do you mean I mustn't be good any more?"

Majendie's imagination played hilariously with this fantastic, this
preposterous notion of his goodness.

"Oh yes, be good," said Edith, "but not too good. Above all, not too good
to me. Concentrate on her, stupid."

"I have concentrated," he moaned, mystified