nt, "mean that you shall stay
there." She paused. "I know what you're thinking. You'd like to know what
right I have to say these things to you."

"Well--I'm awfully stupid--"

"I earned the right fifteen years ago. When a woman gives a man all she
has to give, and gets nothing, there are very few things she hasn't a
right to say to him."

"I've no doubt you earned your right."

"I'm not reproaching you, dear. I'm simply justifying the plainness of my
speech."

He stared at her, but he did not answer.

"Don't think me hard," said she. "I'm saying these things because I care
for you. Because--" She rose, and flung her arms out with a passionate
gesture towards him. "Oh, my dear--my heart aches for you so that I can't
bear it."

She came over to where he sat staring at her, staring half stupefied,
half inflamed. She stood beside him, and passed her hand lightly over his
hair.

"I only want to help you."

"You can't help me."

"I know I can't. I can only say hard things to you."

She stooped, and her lips swept his hair. For a moment love gave her back
her beauty and the enchantment of her youth; it illuminated the house of
flesh it dwelt in and inspired. And yet she could not reach him. His soul
was on its guard.

"You've come back," she whispered. "You've come back. But you never came
till you were driven. That's how I thought you'd come. When you were
driven. When there was nobody but me."

He heard her speaking, but her words had no significance that pierced his
thick and swift sensations.

"What have you done that you should have to pay so?"

"What have I done?"

"Or I?" she said.

He did not hear her. There was another sound in his ears.

Her voice ceased. Her eyes only called to him. He pushed back his chair
and laid his arms on the table, and bowed his head upon them, hiding his
face from her. She knelt down beside him. Her voice was like a warm wind
in his ears. He groaned. She drew a short sharp breath, and pressed her
shoulder to his shoulder, and her face to his hidden face.

At her touch he rose to his feet, violently sobered, loathing himself and
her. He felt his blood leap like a hot fountain to his brain. When she
clung he raged, and pushed her from him, not knowing what he did,
thrusting his hands out, cruelly, against her breasts, so that he wrung
from her a cry of pain and anger.

But when he would have gone from her his feet were loaded; they were
heavy weights binding him to