has made away with one
half of his capacity for seeing. That's his curse! If your eyes are
incessantly looking out they lose the power of looking in."

"And yet, he's the only really great psychologist we've got. He and Jane
Holland."

"Yes, as they go, your psychologists. Tanqueray sees so much inside
other people that he can't see inside himself. What's worse, I shouldn't
think he'd see far inside the people who really touch him. It comes of
perpetually looking away."

"You don't know him. How can you tell?"

"Because I never look away."

"Can you see what's going on inside _me_?"

"Sometimes. I don't always look."

"Can you help looking?"

"Of course you can."

"You _may_ look. I don't think I mind your looking. Why," she asked
abruptly, "don't I mind?"

Her voice had an accent that betrayed her.

"Because there's nothing inside you that you're ashamed of."

She reddened with shame; shame of the fierce, base instinct that had
made her keep him to herself. She knew that nothing escaped him. He had
the keen, comprehending eyes of the physician who knows the sad secrets
of the body; and he had other eyes that saw inward, that held and drew
to confession the terrified, reluctant soul. She had an insane longing
to throw herself at his feet in confession.

"Yes," she said, "but there are _things_----And yet----"

He stopped her. "Nothing, Nina, if you really knew yourself."

"Owen--it's not that. It's not because I don't know myself. It's because
I know you. I know that, whatever there might be in me, whatever I did,
however low I sank--if I could sink--your charity would be there to hold
me up. And it wouldn't be your charity, either. I couldn't stand your
charity. It wouldn't even be understanding. You don't understand me. It
would be some knowledge of me that I couldn't have myself, that nobody
but you could have. As if whatever you saw you'd say, 'That isn't really
Nina.'"

"I should say, 'That's really Nina, so it's all right.'"

She paused, brooding on the possibilities he saw, that he was bound to
see, if he saw anything. Did he, she wondered, really see what was in
her, her hidden shames and insanities, the course of the wild blood that
he knew must flow from all the Lemprieres to her? She lived, to be sure,
the life of an ascetic and took it out in dreams. Yet he must see how
her savage, solitary passion clung to him, and would not let go. Did he
see, and yet did he not condemn her?

"Owen