me to say things, do you?" he
said.

A faint ironic smile came on her face.

"I know what all that is worth," she said, with curious calm equanimity.
"No, I want none of that."

"Then--?"

But now she sat gazing on him with wide, heavy, incomprehensible eyes.
It annoyed him.

"What do you want to see in me?" he asked, with a smile, looking
steadily back again.

And now she turned aside her face once more, and once more the dusky
colour came in her cheek. He waited.

"Shall I go away?" he said at length.

"Would you rather?" she said, keeping her face averted.

"No," he said.

Then again she was silent.

"Where shall I come to you?" he said.

She paused a moment still, then answered:

"I'll go to my room."

"I don't know which it is," he said.

"I'll show it you," she said.

"And then I shall come to you in ten minutes. In ten minutes," he
reiterated.

So she rose, and led the way out of the little salon. He walked with her
to the door of her room, bowed his head as she looked at him, holding
the door handle; and then he turned and went back to the drawing-room,
glancing at his watch.

In the drawing-room he stood quite still, with his feet apart, and
waited. He stood with his hands behind him, and his feet apart, quite
motionless, planted and firm. So the minutes went by unheeded. He looked
at his watch. The ten minutes were just up. He had heard footsteps and
doors. So he decided to give her another five minutes. He wished to be
quite sure that she had had her own time for her own movements.

Then at the end of the five minutes he went straight to her room,
entered, and locked the door behind him. She was lying in bed, with her
back to him.

He found her strange, not as he had imagined her. Not powerful, as
he had imagined her. Strange, in his arms she seemed almost small
and childish, whilst in daily life she looked a full, womanly woman.
Strange, the naked way she clung to him! Almost like a sister, a younger
sister! Or like a child! It filled him with a curious wonder, almost a
bewilderment. In the dark sightlessness of passion, she seemed almost
like a clinging child in his arms. And yet like a child who in some deep
and essential way mocked him. In some strange and incomprehensible way,
as a girl-child blindly obstinate in her deepest nature, she was against
him. He felt she was not his woman. Through him went the feeling, "This
is not my woman."

When, after a long sleep, he awoke