g pause. He
felt that the smile had been inept. He had spoken too much from the
height of his detachment, and the placidity of his words might well seem
horrible to her.

She was finding it horrible. She seemed to be breathing the icy air of a
vault that he had opened before her; heavy, slow, painful breaths, those
of a sleeper oppressed by nightmare; the sound of them, the sight of her
labouring breast hurt him. He put his arms around her and smiled now, as
one smiles at a child to console it. "I've frightened you," he said;
"forgive me. You see, one gets used to it, so soon, for oneself. Dear
little Kitty, I'm so sorry."

Still she did not speak. Still it was that torpid terror that gazed at
him. And the terror was not for what he had thought it was; it was for
what he had said. It was a contagious terror. She cared. In some
unexplained, unforeseen way she cared terribly; and his projects
crumbled beneath her gaze; bewilderment drifted in his mind; her fear
gained him.

"What is the matter? What is it?" he asked.

The change and sharpness in his voice brought them near at last. Kitty
seized his hands and lifted them from her; yet grasping, clinging as she
held him off. He would not have thought her face capable of such
fierceness and demand. She was hardly recognisable as she said: "Do you
want to die? Don't you mind dying?"

"Mind?--I should rather not, of course. I care for my life. But one must
face it; what else is there to do?--And,--what is it Kitty? What have I
done to you?"

And now, her head fallen back, her eyes closed, tears ran down her face,
as piteously, agonised and stricken, she asked:

"Don't you love me at all? Don't you mind leaving me at all?"

His astonishment was so great that for a moment it bereft him of words.
He had risen and was holding her; her eyes were closed and she sobbed
and sobbed, her head fallen back. And her passion of sorrow and despair,
her loveliness, too, and youth, seized and shook him; so that all the
things he had not felt yet, all the hovering, dreadful things, the dark
forms of the cavern, encompassed, pressed upon him; despair and longing,
the horror of annihilation, the agonising sweetness of life. It was as
if a hidden wound had been opened and that his blood was gushing forth,
not to peace, but to pain and torment. He felt his own sobs rising; she
cared; how much she cared. It was as if her caring gave him back the
self that yesterday had blotted out; in her