he was too poor for the quest of the
matchless lady; and through all his young and sombre rage of frustration
there flashed forth his anger with her as the unfit.

He began to tramp up and down the room again, by way of distraction from
his mood. Now and then his eyes turned to her with no thought in them,
only that dark, unhappy fire.

He was quiet now. He had caught sight of some sheets of manuscript lying
on her desk.

"What's this?" he said.

"Only the last thing I've written."

"May I look?"

"You may."

He took it up and sat beside her, close beside her, and turned the
leaves over with a nervous hand. He was not reading. There was no
thought in his eyes.

He looked at her again. She saw that he was at the mercy of his moment,
and of hers.

For it was her moment. There was a power that every woman had, if she
cared to use it and knew how. There was a charm that had nothing to do
with beauty, for it was present in the unbeautiful. These things had
their life secret and apart from every other charm and every other
power. His senses called to the unknown and unacknowledged sense in her.
She knew that he could be hers if she answered to that call. She had
only to kindle her flame, send out her signal.

And she said to herself, "I can't. I can't take him like this. He isn't
himself. It would be hateful of me."

In that moment she had no fear. Love held her back and burning honour
that hardly knew itself from shame. It accused her of having
man[oe]uvred for that moment. It said, "You can't let him come in like
this and trap him."

Another voice in her whispered, "You fool. If you don't marry him some
other woman will--in this mood of his." And honour cried, answering it,
"Let her. So long as it isn't I."

She had a torturing sense of his presence. And with it her fear came
back to her, and she rose suddenly to her feet, and stood apart from
him.

He flung the manuscript into the place she had left, and bowed forward,
hiding his face in his hands. He rose too, and she knew that his moment
had gone. She had let it go.

Then, with a foreboding of his departure, she tried to call him back to
her, not in his way, but her own, the way of the heart.

"Do you know what I should like to do?" she said. "I should like to
sweep it all away, and to get back to that little room, and for nobody
to come near me but you, nobody to read me but you, nobody to talk about
me but you. Do you remember?"

He did, but h