e thought
of the wide-apart eyes, with their curious candour and surety. The
peculiar, half-veiled surety, as if nothing, nothing could overcome
him. It made people angry, this look of silent, indifferent assurance.
"Nothing can touch him on the quick, nothing can really GET at him,"
they felt at last. And they felt it with resentment, almost with hate.
They wanted to be able to get at him. For he was so open-seeming, so
very outspoken. He gave himself away so much. And he had no money to
fall back on. Yet he gave himself away so easily, paid such attention,
almost deference to any chance friend. So they all thought: Here is
a wise person who finds me the wonder which I really am.--And lo and
behold, after he had given them the trial, and found their inevitable
limitations, he departed and ceased to heed their wonderful existence.
Which, to say the least of it, was fraudulent and damnable. It was then,
after his departure, that they realised his basic indifference to them,
and his silent arrogance. A silent arrogance that knew all their wisdom,
and left them to it.

Aaron had been through it all. He had started by thinking Lilly a
peculiar little freak: gone on to think him a wonderful chap, and a
bit pathetic: progressed, and found him generous, but overbearing: then
cruel and intolerant, allowing no man to have a soul of his own: then
terribly arrogant, throwing a fellow aside like an old glove which is
in holes at the finger-ends. And all the time, which was most beastly,
seeing through one. All the time, freak and outsider as he was, Lilly
_knew_. He knew, and his soul was against the whole world.

Driven to bay, and forced to choose. Forced to choose, not between life
and death, but between the world and the uncertain, assertive Lilly.
Forced to choose, and yet, in the world, having nothing left to choose.
For in the world there was nothing left to choose, unless he would give
in and try for success. Aaron knew well enough that if he liked to do
a bit of buttering, people would gladly make a success of him, and give
him money and success. He could become quite a favourite.

But no! If he had to give in to something: if he really had to give in,
and it seemed he had: then he would rather give in to the little Lilly
than to the beastly people of the world. If he had to give in, then
it should be to no woman, and to no social ideal, and to no social
institution. No!--if he had to yield his wilful independence, and g