lingering intonation habitual to her, ‘There seems to be nothing more to say; I almost wonder why you came.’

‘Because you sent for me. I have put everything before you—the case as it stands, as it must stand for me. Perhaps it was better to come and tell you myself.’

‘You need not have waited for my summons.’

‘I meant to write. I thought it would be less painful for us both. It wasn’t an easy matter, though. I was making a bungling attempt at an explanation on paper when your letter came.’

‘The explanation that you were going to relinquish me for a poetic and almost feminine fancy?’

‘I had no choice.’

‘I did not know that men went in for this kind of thing. I imagined they were more—definite.’

‘I did not know myself that I could have done it a month ago; but women—a good woman—can turn a man inside out sometimes, and show him what he can and cannot do.’

She had been holding her hands towards the fire, but now she turned and took from a table an Indian paper-knife and began slipping it in and out the uncut pages of a magazine.

‘The fact is that you love this other woman still.’

He hesitated, experiencing an almost Puritan desire to speak the barest truth.

‘Not in the way you mean. I have learned this week that there are many ways of love.’

‘Is that original?’ she asked, running a finger up and down the carved blade in her hand. ‘Are you sure you are not echoing a phrase of hers?’

‘Perhaps. Mildred,’ he cried, ‘you make things even harder than they were. If you saw my heart, you would know I am not a traitor—at least to you.’

To that other, he did not feel that he was playing altogether an untreacherous part.

‘Your intricacies elude me. I admit I do not understand your way—your “ways”.’

‘Not after I have told you everything: when I have begged you to wait for me, as perhaps I ought not, as I surely should not have done if I did not care for you so much, dread losing you so terribly?’

‘You must have known I should not consent to see you implicitly the lover of another woman.’

‘I am not her lover’, he said briefly.

‘Another fine distinction which I cannot grasp.’

‘If you could see my heart—’ he began again; but she broke in.

‘I can see enough of it to know it is not wholly mine.’

‘Do you want protestations?’ he asked heavily, but without bitterness. ‘How can I make them now, with your refusal—with the vanity of hope—before me, with nothing but good-bye to say?’

‘If you cared, you would not say it!’