old you what happened, though I knew you'd loathe me."

"I don't. I'm glad you told me. I'm glad it happened. I mean I'm glad
you worked it off on him.... You got it over; you've had your
experience; you know all about it; you know how long that sort of thing
lasts and how it ends. The baseness, the cruelty of it ... I'm like you,
Charlotte, I don't want any more of it.... When I say I care for you I
mean I want to be with you, to be with you _always_. I'm not happy when
you're not there....

"... I say, I wish you'd leave this place and come away and live with me
somewhere."

"Where?"

"There's my farm. My father's going to give me one if I stick to
this job. We could run it together. There are all sorts of jolly
things we could do together.... Would you like to live with me,
Charlotte, on my farm?"

"Yes."

"I mean--live with me without _that_."

"Yes; without that."

"It isn't that I don't care for you. It's because I care so awfully, so
much more than anybody else could. I want to go on caring, and it's the
only way. People don't know that. They don't know what they're
destroying with their blind rushing together. All the delicate,
exquisite sensations. Charlotte, I can get all the ecstasy I want by
just sitting here and looking at you, hearing your voice, touching
you--like this." His finger-tips brushed the bare skin of her arm. "Even
thinking of you ...

"... And all that would go. Everything would go....

"... But our way--nothing could end it."

"I can see one thing that would end it. If you found somebody you really
cared about."

"Oh _that_--You mean if I--It wouldn't happen, and if it did, what
difference would it make?"

"You mean you'd come back?"

"I mean I shouldn't have left you."

"Still, you'd have gone to her. John, I don't think I could bear it."

"You wouldn't have to bear it long. It wouldn't last."

"Why shouldn't it?"

"Because--You don't understand, Charlotte--if I know a woman wants me, it
makes me loathe her."

"It wouldn't, if you wanted _her_."

"That would be worse. I should _hate_ her then if she made me go to her."

"You don't know."

"Oh, don't I!"

"You can't, if you feel like that about it."

"You say you feel like that about it yourself."

"That's because I've been through it."

"Do you suppose," he said, "I haven't?"

BOOK TWO

JOHN RODEN CONWAY

VI

It was an hour since they had left Newhaven.

The boat went steadily, infle