.' In pleading with her he had used the words
himself. She--poor soul!--had but repeated them, trying to endure them,
to believe them true. And were they true? Again no answer, or certainly
none that he could give. To have had the waters broken up; to be plunged
into emotion; to feel desperately, instead of stagnating--some day he
might be grateful--who knew? Some day there might be fair country again
beyond this desert, where he could work even better than before. But
just now, as well expect creative work from a condemned man. It seemed
to him that he was equally destroyed whether he gave Nell up, and with
her, once for all, that roving, seeking instinct, which ought, forsooth,
to have been satisfied, and was not; or whether he took Nell, knowing
that in doing so he was torturing a woman dear to him! That was as far
as he could see to-day. What he would come to see in time God only knew!
But: 'Freedom of the Spirit!' That was a phrase of bitter irony indeed!
And, there, with his work all round him, like a man tied hand and foot,
he was swept by such a feeling of exasperated rage as he had never
known. Women! These women! Only let him be free of both, of all women,
and the passions and pities they aroused, so that his brain and his
hands might live and work again! They should not strangle, they should
not destroy him!

Unfortunately, even in his rage, he knew that flight from them both
could never help him. One way or the other the thing would have to be
fought through. If it had been a straight fight even; a clear issue
between passion and pity! But both he loved, and both he pitied. There
was nothing straight and clear about it anywhere; it was all too
deeply rooted in full human nature. And the appalling sense of rushing
ceaselessly from barrier to barrier began really to affect his brain.

True, he had now and then a lucid interval of a few minutes, when the
ingenious nature of his own torments struck him as supremely interesting
and queer; but this was not precisely a relief, for it only meant, as in
prolonged toothache, that his power of feeling had for a moment ceased.
A very pretty little hell indeed!

All day he had the premonition, amounting to certainty, that Nell would
take alarm at those three words he had sent her, and come in spite of
them. And yet, what else could he have written? Nothing save what must
have alarmed her more, or plunged him deeper. He had the feeling that
she could follow his moods, t