d itself; and now once more it faded. To put such a
public and terrible affront on a tender wife whom he loved, do her to
death, as it were, before the world's eyes--and then, ever remorseful,
grow old while the girl was still young? He could not. If Sylvia had not
loved him, yes; or, even if he had not loved her; or if, again, though
loving him she had stood upon her rights--in any of those events he
might have done it. But to leave her whom he did love, and who had said
to him so generously: "I will not hamper you--go to her"--would be a
black atrocity. Every memory, from their boy-and-girl lovering to the
desperate clinging of her arms these last two nights--memory with its
innumerable tentacles, the invincible strength of its countless threads,
bound him to her too fast. What then? Must it come, after all, to giving
up the girl? And sitting there, by that warm fire, he shivered. How
desolate, sacrilegious, wasteful to throw love away; to turn from the
most precious of all gifts; to drop and break that vase! There was not
too much love in the world, nor too much warmth and beauty--not, anyway,
for those whose sands were running out, whose blood would soon be cold.

Could Sylvia not let him keep both her love and the girl's? Could she
not bear that? She had said she could; but her face, her eyes, her voice
gave her the lie, so that every time he heard her his heart turned sick
with pity. This, then, was the real issue. Could he accept from her such
a sacrifice, exact a daily misery, see her droop and fade beneath it?
Could he bear his own happiness at such a cost? Would it be happiness
at all? He got up from the chair and crept towards her. She looked very
fragile sleeping there! The darkness below her closed eyelids showed
cruelly on that too fair skin; and in her flax-coloured hair he saw what
he had never noticed--a few strands of white. Her softly opened lips,
almost colourless, quivered with her uneven breathing; and now and
again a little feverish shiver passed up as from her heart. All soft and
fragile! Not much life, not much strength; youth and beauty slipping! To
know that he who should be her champion against age and time would day
by day be placing one more mark upon her face, one more sorrow in her
heart! That he should do this--they both going down the years together!

As he stood there holding his breath, bending to look at her, that
slurring swish of the plane-tree branch, flung against and against the