rding to the pact with the manager, she was to
sleep.

She shivered as we went into it.

"Oh, Treevor, what a great big room," she said; "I am frightened at
it. Won't you stay with me? Or let me be in yours?"

"I said you should sleep here," I answered; "so you must. Jump into
bed quick and go to sleep; you will soon forget the size of the room.
I am dead tired now, I must go and get some sleep myself. Good-night,
dear."

I kissed her and went back to the sitting-room. The morning light
struggling with the artificial fell on the table with its scattered
plates and glasses, and on her little trunk and the unpacked silken
clothes.

I turned out the lights and drew up the blinds, and stood looking out.
The waves of soft white fog filled the empty streets. All was quiet,
white, in the dawn.

I had said I was tired, yet now sleep seemed far from my eyes, and my
mind flew out over intervening space to Viola, longing to find her,
wherever she was.

Where would she be? I could imagine her waking with this same dawn in
her calm, innocent bed, and gazing, too, into this white light, and
longing for me. Surely she would be that? The words of her letter came
back to me: the time would pass "slowly as a winter night to me, your
Viola."

She was right. Nothing could divide us permanently, really. Perhaps
even Death would be powerless to do that.

I had a dissatisfied feeling with myself. Would it have been better, I
asked myself, to have waited through this year alone, since nothing
could really satisfy or delight me in her absence? What was the good,
after all, of chasing the mere shadow of the joy I had with her?

But, strangely enough, I felt that Viola had no wish that I should
pass this mysterious year of separation she had imposed upon us,
alone.

She had confessed her inability to share my love with any other. The
incident of Veronica had made that clear; but now that she chose to
deny herself to me she seemed rather to wish than otherwise that I
should seek adventures, experiences elsewhere. And I felt
indefinitely, yet strongly, that the more I could crush into this year
of life and of artistic inspiration, especially the latter, the
happier she would feel when we met.

Perhaps she wished to tire me with lesser loves, certain that her own
must prevail against them. Perhaps she had even left me solely for
this, with this idea. Knowing herself unable to bear the pain of
infidelity to her when she was present,