ut there came only his voice.

"I want you. The first moment I saw you I wanted you. I thought then
that, whatever the cost, I would have you. That was in the early days of
our talks here--before you made it so courageously clear to me that it
would never be possible for you to ignore my marriage and come to me.
That is still so, isn't it?"

She moved slightly, like a dreamer in pain, as again she faced the creed
she had hated through many a sleepless night.

"It is so," she agreed. "And because it is so, you are going away
to-morrow."

"Yes."

They looked at each other across the foot or two of intervening space.
It was a look to bridge death with. But even beneath their suffering,
her eyes voiced the tremulous waiting of her lips.

At last he found words.

"You are the most wonderful woman in the world--the pluckiest, the most
completely understanding; you have the widest charity. I suppose I ought
to thank you for it all; I can't--that's not my way. I have always
demanded of you, demanded enormously, and received my measure pressed
down and running over. Now I am going to ask this last thing of you:
will you, of your goodness, go away--upstairs, anywhere--and come back
in ten minutes' time? By then I shall have cleared out."

She looked at him almost incredulously, lips parted. Suddenly she seemed
a child.

"You--I----" she stammered. Then rising to her feet, with a superb
simplicity: "But, you must kiss me before you go. You must! You--simply
_must_."

For the space of a flaming moment it seemed that in one stride he would
have crossed to her side, caught and held her.

"For God's sake----!" he muttered, in almost ludicrous fear of himself.
Then, with a big effort, he regained his self-control.

"Listen," he said hoarsely. "I want to kiss you so much that I daren't
even get to my feet. Do you understand what that means? Think of it,
just for a moment, and then realise that _I am not going to kiss you_.
And I have kissed many women in my time, too, and shall kiss more, no
doubt."

"But it's not because of that----?"

"That I'm holding back? No. Neither is it because I funk the torture of
kissing you once and letting you go. It's because I'm afraid--for
_you_."

"For me?"

"Listen. You have unfolded your beliefs to me and, though I don't hold
them--don't attempt to live up to your lights--the realisation of them
has given me a reverence for you that you don't dream of. I have put you
in a shrine