rd with the slight prominence of its jaw, the upper lip
accentuated by the tilt of its moustache. Tanqueray's face, his
features, always seemed to her to lean forward as against a wind,
suggesting things eager and in salient flight. They shared now in his
difference, his excitement. His eyes as they looked at her had lost
something of their old lucidity. They were more brilliant and yet
somehow more obscure.

Then, suddenly, she saw how he was driven.

He was out on the first mad hunt with love. Love and he stalked the
hills, questing the visionary maid.

It was not she. His trouble was as yet vague and purely impersonal. She
saw (it was her business) by every infallible sign and token that it was
not she. She saw, too, that he was enraged with her for this reason,
that it was not she. That showed that he was approaching headlong the
point of danger; and she, if she were his friend, was bound to keep him
back. He was not in love with her or with any one, but he was in that
insane mood when honourable men marry, sometimes disastrously. Any
woman, even she, could draw him to her now by holding out her hand.

And between them there came a terror, creeping like a beast of prey,
dumb, and holding them dumb. She searched for words to dispel it, but no
words came; her heart beat too quickly; he must hear it beat. That was
not the signal he was waiting for, that beating of her heart.

He tried to give himself the semblance and the sense of ease by walking
about the room and examining the things in it. There were some that it
had lacked before, signs that the young novelist had increased in
material prosperity. Yes. He had liked her better when she had worked
harder and was as poor as he. They had come to look on poverty as their
protection from the ruinous world. He now realized that it had also been
their protection from each other. He was too poor to marry.

He reflected with some bitterness that Jane was not, now.

She in her corner called him from his wanderings. She had made the
coffee. He drank it where he stood, on the hearthrug, ignoring his old
place on the sofa by her side.

She brooded there, leaving her cup untasted. She had man[oe]uvred to
keep him. And now she wished that she had let him go.

"Aren't you going to drink your coffee?" he said.

"No. I shan't sleep if I do."

"Haven't you been sleeping?"

"Not very well."

"That's why you're looking like your portrait. That man isn't such a
silly ass