You two"--I
swallowed it--"love one another."

I paused. They answered me by silence, by a thoughtful silence.

"You belong to each other. I have thought it over and looked at it
from many points of view. I happened to want--impossible things.
. . . I behaved badly. I had no right to pursue you." I turned to
Verrall. "You hold yourself bound to her?"

He nodded assent.

"No social influence, no fading out of all this generous clearness
in the air--for that might happen--will change you back . . . ?"

He answered me with honest eyes meeting mine, "No, Leadford, no!"

"I did not know you," I said. "I thought of you as something very
different from this."

"I was," he interpolated.

"Now," I said, "it is all changed."

Then I halted--for my thread had slipped away from me.

"As for me," I went on, and glanced at Nettie's downcast face, and
then sat forward with my eyes upon the flowers between us, "since
I am swayed and shall be swayed by an affection for Nettie, since
that affection is rich with the seeds of desire, since to see her
yours and wholly yours is not to be endured by me--I must turn
about and go from you; you must avoid me and I you. . . . We must
divide the world like Jacob and Esau. . . . I must direct myself
with all the will I have to other things. After all--this passion
is not life! It is perhaps for brutes and savages, but for men.
No! We must part and I must forget. What else is there but that?"

I did not look up, I sat very tense with the red petals printing
an indelible memory in my brain, but I felt the assent of Verrall's
pose. There were some moments of silence. Then Nettie spoke.
"But------" she said, and ceased.

I waited for a little while. I sighed and leant back in my chair.
"It is perfectly simple," I smiled, "now that we have cool heads."

"But IS it simple?" asked Nettie, and slashed my discourse out of
being.

I looked up and found her with her eyes on Verrall. "You see,"
she said, "I like Willie. It's hard to say what one feels--but I
don't want him to go away like that."

"But then," objected Verrall, "how------?"

"No," said Nettie, and swept her half-arranged carnation petals back
into a heap of confusion. She began to arrange them very quickly
into one long straight line.

"It's so difficult------ I've never before in all my life tried
to get to the bottom of my mind. For one thing, I've not treated
Willie properly. He--he counted on me. I know he did. I was