t warns him instantly to summon his self-control. That before
everything.

The next moment he follows her into the room, lights the gas,
returns to the door, closes it, and then comes back towards the rug
where she is standing.

By this time his command is his own. His face is as calm as a mask.
His large eyes, somewhat bloodshot now from hours of smoking and a
sleepless night, rest upon her with cold enquiry.

She has seen them once, met them once, fixed, liquid, with
passionate longing upon hers; desperately she seeks in them now for
one gleam of the same light, but there is none. They and his face
are cloaked in a cold reserve. Sick, and with her heart beating to
suffocation, she says, as he waits for her to explain her presence:

"We are--going away."

Stephen's heart seems to contract at the words he had so often
dreaded to hear, heard at last.

His thoughts take a greyer hopelessness.

"Oh, really!" he says merely, the shock he feels only slightly
intensifying his habitual drawl. "Not immediately, I hope?"

Nothing to the nervous, excited, over-strained girl before him
could be more galling, more humiliating, more crushing than the
cold, conventional politeness of his tones and words.

This frightful fence of Society manner that he will put between
them--a slight, delicate defence, is as effectual as if he caused a
precipice by magic to yawn between them.

"No--not--not--quite immediately, but soon," she falters. "And it
seems as if I could not exist if--I--never see you."

There is a strained pause while they stand facing each other. He
is motionless; one hand rests in his pocket, the other hangs
nerveless at his side.

They look at each other. Each is thinking of the supreme
delight--even if momentary--the other's embrace could give if--but
the conditions in the respective minds are different--in his: "If I
thought it wise;" in hers: "If he only would."

"Well, we can write to each other," he says at last.

"Oh, but what are letters?" the girl says passionately; and then,
urged on hard by her love for him, her intuition of his love for
her, and her common-sense instinct not to throw away her life's
happiness for a misunderstanding or petty feeling of pride, she
adds: "You know--don't you?--that I care for you more than anything
else in the world."

Her tones are sharp with the intensity of feeling, and she
stretches both hands imploringly a little way towards him.

He sees them quiver and h