me. It's where I score."

"You had nobody but me to talk to then, if you remember."

"No. Nobody but you."

"And it wasn't enough for you."

"Oh, wasn't it? When you were never the same person for a week together.
It was like knowing fifteen or twenty men."

He smiled. "I've always been the same man to you, Jinny. Haven't I?"

"I'm not so sure," said she.

"Anyhow, you were safe with me."

"From what?"

"From being 'had.' But now you've begun knowing all sorts of people----"

"Is that why you've kept away from me?"

He ignored her question. "Awful people, implacable, insatiable,
pernicious, destructive people. The trackers down, the hangers-on, the
persecutors, the pursuers. Did _I_ ever pursue you?"

"No, George. I can't say you ever did. I can't see you pursuing any
one."

"_They_ will. And they'll have you at every turn."

"No. I'm safe. You see, I don't care for any of them."

"They'll 'have' you all the same. You lend yourself to being 'had.'"

"Do I?" She said it defiantly.

"No. You never lend--you give yourself. To be eaten up. You let
everybody prey on you. You'd be preyed on by me, if I let you."

"Oh--you----"

"And yet," he said, "I wonder----"

He paused, considering her with brilliant but unhappy eyes.

"Jinny," he said, "where do you get the fire that you put into your
books?"

"Where you get yours," she said.

Again he considered her. "Come out of it," he said. "Get away from these
dreadful people, these dreadful, clever little people."

She smiled, recognizing them.

"Look at _me_," he said.

"Oh, you," she said again, with another intonation.

"Yes, me. I was born out of it."

"And I--wasn't I born? Look at _me_?" She turned to him, holding her
head high.

"I am looking at you. I've been looking at you all the evening--and I
see a difference already."

"What you see is the difference in my clothes. There is no difference in
me."

It was he who was different. She looked at him, trying to penetrate the
secret of his difference. There was a restlessness about him, a fever
and the brilliance fever brought.

She looked at him and saw a creature dark and colourless, yet splendidly
alive. She knew him by heart, every detail of him, the hair,
close-cropped, that left clean the full backward curve of his head; his
face with its patches of ash and bistre; his eyes, hazel, lucid, intent,
sunk under irritable brows; his mouth, narrowish, the lower lip full,
pushed forwa