would never see her again. But I can't live without her. I
must go on suffering when she's with me, suffering when she's away from
me. And God knows how it's all to end!'

He took her hand in the darkness; it was cold and unresponsive as
a stone. He tried to see her face, but could read nothing in those
greenish eyes staring before them, like a cat's, into the darkness.

When the cab was gone they stood looking at each other by the light of a
street lamp. And George thought:

'So I must leave her like this, and what then?'

She put her latch-key in the door, and turned round to him. In the
silent, empty street, where the wind was rustling and scraping round the
corners of tall houses, and the lamplight flickered, her face and figure
were so strange, motionless, Sphinx-like. Only her eyes seemed alive,
fastened on his own.

"Good-night!" he muttered.

She beckoned.

"Take what you can of me, George!" she said.

CHAPTER IV

Mr. PENDYCE'S HEAD

Mr. Pendyce's head, seen from behind at his library bureau, where it
was his practice to spend most mornings from half-past nine to eleven or
even twelve, was observed to be of a shape to throw no small light upon
his class and character. Its contour was almost national. Bulging at the
back, and sloping rapidly to a thin and wiry neck, narrow between the
ears and across the brow, prominent in the jaw, the length of a line
drawn from the back headland to the promontory at the chin would have
been extreme. Upon the observer there was impressed the conviction that
here was a skull denoting, by surplusage of length, great precision of
character and disposition to action, and, by deficiency of breadth, a
narrow tenacity which might at times amount to wrong-headedness.
The thin cantankerous neck, on which little hairs grew low, and the
intelligent ears, confirmed this impression; and when his face, with its
clipped hair, dry rosiness, into which the east wind had driven a shade
of yellow and the sun a shade of brown, and grey, rather discontented
eyes, came into view, the observer had no longer any hesitation
in saying that he was in the presence of an Englishman, a landed
proprietor, and, but for Mr. Pendyce's rooted belief to the contrary,
an individualist. His head, indeed, was like nothing so much as the
Admiralty Pier at Dover--that strange long narrow thing, with a slight
twist or bend at the end, which first disturbs the comfort of foreigners
arriving on these s