d them now. Perhaps she would not have seen them but for that
attempt to hide them which revealed their significance. She said to
herself, "He is poor; and yet he has done this." And the love that had
been so long hidden, sheltered and protected by her pity, came forth,
and knew itself as love. And she forgot his greatness and remembered
only those pitiful human things in which he had need of her. So she
surrendered.

"I will take everything--on one condition. That you will give me--what
you said just now I wouldn't have." The eyes that she lifted to his
were full of tears.

For one moment he did not understand. Very slowly he realized that the
thing he had dreamed and despaired of, that he dared not ask for, was
being divinely offered to him as a free gift. There was no moment, not
even in that night of his madness, in this room nine years ago, nor in
that other night in Howland Street, when he had desired it as he
desired it now.

Her tears hung curved on the curved lashes of her eyes, and spilt
themselves, and fell one by one on to the pages of the manuscript. He
heard them fall.

Before he let himself be carried away by the sweep of her impulse and
his own passion he saw that not honour but common decency forbade him
to take advantage of a moment's inspired tenderness. He had already
made a slight appeal _ad misericordiam_; but that was for her sake not
his own. He realized most completely his impossible position. He had
no income, and he had damaged his health so seriously that it might be
long enough before he could make one; and these facts he could not
possibly mention. She suspected him of poverty; but the smallest hint
of his real state would have roused her infallible instinct of
divination. He had felt, as her eyes rested on his emaciated body,
that they could see the course of its sufferings, its starvation. He
meant that she should never know what things had happened to him in
Howland Street. His chivalry revolted against the brutality of
capturing her tender heart by such a lacerating haul on its
compassion.

All this swept through him between the falling of her ears. Last of
all came the thought of what he was giving up. Was it possible that
she cared for him?

It could not be. The illusion lasted only for an instant. Yet while it
lasted the insane longing seized him to take her at her word and risk
the consequences. For she would find out afterwards that she had never
loved him; and she would d