ike me, Stratton, as not realizing that women
are weak things. We've got to take _care_ of them. You don't seem to
feel that as I do. Their moods--fluctuate--more than ours do. If you
hold 'em to what they say in the same way you hold a man--it isn't
fair...."

He halted as though he awaited my assent to that proposition.

"If you were to meet Mary now, you see, and if you were to say to her,
come--come and we'll jump down Etna together, and you said it in the
proper voice and with the proper force, she'd do it, Stratton. You know
that. Any man knows a thing like that. And she wouldn't _want_ to do
it...."

"You mean that's why I can't see her."

"That's why you can't see her."

"Because we'd become--dramatic."

"Because you'd become--romantic and uncivilized."

"Well," I said sullenly, realizing the bargain we were making, "I
won't."

"You won't make any appeal?"

"No."

He made no answer, and I looked up to discover him glancing over his
shoulder through the great glass window into the other room. I stood up
very quickly, and there in the further apartment were Guy and Mary,
standing side by side. Our eyes met, and she came forward towards the
window impulsively, and paused, with that unpitying pane between us....

Then Guy was opening the door for her and she stood in the doorway. She
was in dark furs wrapped about her, but in the instant I could see how
ill she was and how broken. She came a step or so towards me and then
stopped short, and so we stood, shyly and awkwardly under Guy and
Tarvrille's eyes, two yards apart. "You see," she said, and stopped
lamely.

"You and I," I said, "have to part, Mary. We---- We are beaten. Is that
so?"

"Stephen, there is nothing for us to do. We've offended. We broke the
rules. We have to pay."

"By parting?"

"What else is there to do?"

"No," I said. "There's nothing else." ...

"I tried," she said, "that you shouldn't be sent from England."

"That's a detail," I answered.

"But your politics--your work?"

"That does not matter. The great thing is that you are ill and
unhappy--that I can't help you. I can't do anything.... I'd go anywhere
... to save you.... All I can do, I suppose, is to part like this and
go."

"I shan't be--altogether unhappy. And I shall think of you----"

She paused, and we stood facing one another, tongue-tied. There was only
one word more to say, and neither of us would say it for a moment.

"Good-bye," she whispered at l