little gesture of
impotent misery.

"That's just it--you tried to make me save myself for my own sake,--and
it couldn't be done. It was a failure. And now you're trying to make
me save myself for your sake----"

"It's not your salvation I want--it's _you_!"

"But it's only through being honest that I can hold and keep you; can't
you see that? If I can't trust myself, I can't possibly trust _you_!"

"Couldn't we try--once more?" Her voice was little more than a whisper.

He looked up at the soft and velvet stars that peered down so
voluptuously from a soft and velvet sky. He looked at them for many
moments, before he spoke again.

"If I got back to my work again, my right and honest work, I _could_ be
honest!" he declared, vehemently.

"But we _are_ going back," she assuaged.

"Yes, but see what we have to go through, first!"

"I know," she admitted, unhappily. "But even then, we could say that
it was to be for the last time."

"As we said before--and failed!"

"But this time we needn't fail. Think what it will mean if you have
your work on your transmitting camera waiting for you--months and years
of hard and honest work--work that you love, work that will lead to
bigger things, and give you the time, yes, and the money, you need to
perfect your amplifier. But outside of that, even to have your
work--surely that's enough!"

"I'd have to have you, as well!" he said, out of the silence that had
fallen upon them.

"You always will, Jim, you know that!"

"But I'm afraid of myself! I'm afraid of my moods--I'm afraid of my
own distrust. I have a feeling that it may hurt you, sometime, almost
beyond forgiveness!"

"I'll try to understand!" she murmured. And again silence fell over
them.

"I'm afraid of making promises," he said, half whimsically, half
weakly, after many minutes of thought.

"I don't want you to promise--only _try_!" she pleaded, swept by a wave
of gratitude that seemed to fling her more intimately than ever before
into her husband's arms. Yet it was a wave, and nothing more. For it
receded as it came, leaving her, a moment later, chilled and
apprehensive before their over-troubled future. With a little muffled
cry of emotion, almost animal-like in its inarticulate intensity, she
turned to her husband, and strained him in her arms, in her human and
unhappy and unsatisfied arms.

"Oh, love me!" she pleaded, brokenly. "Love me! Love me--for I need
it!"

They seemed stran