g to him the more abjectly.

"'Tell me you love me!' she would cry fiercely, stretching her white
arms towards him.

"'I have told you so,' he would reply calmly, without moving.

"'I want to hear you tell it me again,' she would plead with a voice
that trembled on a sob. 'Come close to me and tell it me again, again,
again!'

"Then, as she lay with half-closed eyes, he would pour forth a flood
of passionate words sufficient to satisfy even her thirsty ears, and
afterwards, as the gates clanged behind him, would take up an
engineering problem at the exact point at which half-an-hour before, on
her entrance into the room, he had temporarily dismissed it.

"One day, a privileged friend put bluntly to him this question: 'Are you
playing for love or vanity?'

"To which the man, after long pondering, gave this reply: ''Pon my soul,
Jack, I couldn't tell you.'

"Now, when a man is in love with a woman who cannot make up her mind
whether she loves him or not, we call the complication comedy; where it
is the woman who is in earnest the result is generally tragedy.

"They continued to meet and to make love. They talked--as people in
their position are prone to talk--of the beautiful life they would lead
if it only were not for the thing that was; of the earthly paradise--or,
maybe, 'earthy' would be the more suitable adjective--they would each
create for the other, if only they had the right which they hadn't.

[Illustration: "SHE LAY WITH HALF-CLOSED EYES."]

"In this work of imagination the man trusted chiefly to his literary
faculties, which were considerable; the woman to her desires. Thus, his
scenes possessed a grace and finish which hers lacked, but her pictures
were the more vivid. Indeed, so realistic did she paint them, that to
herself they seemed realities, waiting for her. Then she would rise to
go towards them only to strike herself against the thought of the thing
that stood between herself and them. At first the woman only hated the
thing, but after a while there came an ugly look of hope into her eyes.

"The time drew near for the man to return to England. The canal was
completed, and a day appointed for the letting in of the water. The man
determined to make the event the occasion of a social gathering. He
invited a large number of guests, among whom were the woman and her
husband, to assist at the function. Afterwards the party were to picnic
at a pleasant wooded spot some three-quarters of a mile f