t me I've come for always,' she
said.

"Here again, if I give you an honest account of my feelings I shall
write myself down as the poor-spirited creature I suppose I am. There
wasn't, I swear, at the moment, a grain of selfishness, of personal
reluctance, in my feeling. I worshipped every hair of her head--when we
were together I was happy, when I was away from her something was gone
from every good thing; but I had always looked on our love for each
other, our possible relation to each other, as such situations are
looked on in what is called society. I had supposed her, for all her
freedom and originality, to be just as tacitly subservient to that view
as I was: ready to take what she wanted on the terms on which society
concedes such taking, and to pay for it by the usual restrictions,
concealments and hypocrisies. In short, I supposed that she would 'play
the game'--look out for her own safety, and expect me to look out for
it. It sounds cheap enough, put that way--but it's the rule we live
under, all of us. And the amazement of finding her suddenly outside of
it, oblivious of it, unconscious of it, left me, for an awful minute,
stammering at her like a graceless dolt.... Perhaps it wasn't even a
minute; but in it she had gone the whole round of my thoughts.

"'It's raining,' she said, very low. 'I suppose you can telephone for a
trap?'

"There was no irony or resentment in her voice. She walked slowly across
the room and paused before the Brangwyn etching over there. 'That's a
good impression. _Will_ you telephone, please?' she repeated.

"I found my voice again, and with it the power of movement. I followed
her and dropped at her feet. 'You can't go like this!' I cried.

"She looked down on me from heights and heights. 'I can't stay like
this,' she answered.

"I stood up and we faced each other like antagonists. 'You don't know,'
I accused her passionately, 'in the least what you're asking me to ask
of you!'

"'Yes, I do: _everything_,' she breathed.

"'And it's got to be that or nothing?'

"'Oh, on both sides,' she reminded me.

"'_Not_ on both sides. It's not fair. That's why--'

"'Why you won't?'

"'Why I cannot--may not!'

"'Why you'll take a night and not a life?'

"The taunt, for a woman usually so sure of her aim, fell so short of
the mark that its only effect was to increase my conviction of her
helplessness. The very intensity of my longing for her made me tremble
where she was fearles