bout him, like so many high visitants from an old, lost, lost
subtle world, where men had the wonder of demons about them, the aura of
demons, such as still clings to the cypresses, in Tuscany.

All day, he did not make up his mind what he was going to do. His first
impulse was never to see her again. And this was his intention all day.
But as he went home in the tram he softened, and thought. Nay,
that would not be fair. For how had she treated him, otherwise than
generously.

She had been generous, and the other thing, that he felt blasted
afterwards, which was his experience, that was fate, and not her fault.
So he must see her again. He must not act like a churl. But he would
tell her--he would tell her that he was a married man, and that though
he had left his wife, and though he had no dogma of fidelity, still,
the years of marriage had made a married man of him, and any other woman
than his wife was a strange woman to him, a violation. "I will tell
her," he said to himself, "that at the bottom of my heart I love Lottie
still, and that I can't help it. I believe that is true. It isn't love,
perhaps. But it is marriage. I am married to Lottie. And that means I
can't be married to another woman. It isn't my nature. And perhaps I
can't bear to live with Lottie now, because I am married and not in
love. When a man is married, he is not in love. A husband is not a
lover. Lilly told me that: and I know it's true now. Lilly told me that
a husband cannot be a lover, and a lover cannot be a husband. And that
women will only have lovers now, and never a husband. Well, I am a
husband, if I am anything. And I shall never be a lover again, not while
I live. No, not to anybody. I haven't it in me. I'm a husband, and so it
is finished with me as a lover. I can't be a lover any more, just as I
can't be aged twenty any more. I am a man now, not an adolescent. And to
my sorrow I am a husband to a woman who wants a lover: always a lover.
But all women want lovers. And I can't be it any more. I don't want to.
I have finished that. Finished for ever: unless I become senile---"

Therefore next day he gathered up his courage. He would not have had
courage unless he had known that he was not alone. The other man was
in the town, and from this fact he derived his strength: the fact that
Lilly was there. So at teatime he went over the river, and rang at her
door. Yes, she was at home, and she had other visitors. She was wearing
a beautif