en he went away.

What had she done to make him afraid of her? Or was it what she had
said? The other day, before she had seen Julia, she could have said
anything to him. Now it seemed there was nothing that she could say.

What was it that he had seen in her?

That was it. With all his wonderful comprehension he had failed her
in the ultimate test--the ability to see what was in her. He had
seen nothing but one thing, the thing he was accustomed to see, the
material woman's passion to pursue, to make captive, to possess. He
would go thinking all his life that it was she who had failed, she
who, by her vulgarity, had made it impossible for him to remain her
friend. She supposed she _had_ piled it up too high. It was her very
defenses that had betrayed her, made her more flagrant and exposed.

She bowed herself for hours to the scourging of that thought till
the thought itself perished from exhaustion.

She knew that it was not so. He held her higher than that.

He was not afraid. He was only sorry for her. He had tried to be
more tender to her than she was herself. He was going away because
his honor, his masculine honor, told him that if he could not marry
her there was nothing else for him to do. He was trying to spare her
pain. It was very honorable of him, she knew.

But it would have been more honorable still if he had stayed; if he
had trusted her to keep her friendship incorruptible by pain. Or
rather, if he had seen that no pain could touch her, short of the
consummate spiritual torture he was inflicting now.

There were moments when she stood back from the torture
self-delivered. When she heard herself saying to him: "I know why
you're going. It's because you think I wanted you to give me
something that you can't give me. Don't you see that if you can't
give it me it doesn't matter? It's, after all, so little compared
with what you have given me. Is it honorable to take that away?
Don't you see how you're breaking faith with me? Don't you see that
you've made me ashamed, and that nothing can be worse to bear than
that?"

Then she knew that she would never be able to say that to him. She
would never be able to say anything to him any more. She wondered
whether he had made those other women ashamed when he broke loose
from them. Was she ashamed, did she suffer, the woman who had caught
and held him, and hurt him so?

At the thought of his hurt her passion had such pity that it cried
out in her, "What