ove with
Jean? Vanna asked herself curiously for the hundredth time in the
course of the last few days. If she had but known it, Rendall was
engaged in asking himself the same question, and finding it almost as
difficult to answer.

At times, yes! He would have been less than a man if he had not been
occasionally swept off his feet by the vivid beauty of that upturned
face. Jean present--laughing, teasing, cajoling--could hold him
captive. Ear and eye alike were busy in her presence, busy and charmed;
haunting, everyday cares were thrust into the background, and discontent
transformed into joy. For the hour it would seem as if the whole
happiness of life were to laugh, and dance, and to rejoice in the
sunshine. So far so good, but--Jean absent, the spell dissolved. The
thought of her had no power to hold him; he could live tranquilly for
months together, indifferent to, almost forgetful of, her existence.
Here there was surely something wrong. This could be no real passion,
which was so lightly dispelled. If he really loved as a man should
love, the thought of her should be as chains drawing him to her side.
Piers Rendall sighed. "Perhaps," he told himself with weary
self-depredation--"perhaps I am incapable of real passion. It is the
same story all round. I never get far enough. Nature made me in a
mocking mood, cursing me with high aims and poor achievements. What I
long for is never accomplished, what I attain never satisfies. If I am
to find any happiness from life, I must adjust the balance and be
satisfied with smaller things. It's time I married. Most men can live
alone, but I'm sick of solitude. Ten years of life in chambers is
enough for any man. Jean is a darling, a delight to the eyes; she's
only a child, but she's sweet all through, and she'll grow. She'll be a
dear woman. I am always happy in her company--it's only when we are
apart that I have doubts. If she would have me, we should always be
together. _Would_ she have me, I wonder?"

He looked down at the girl as she walked by his side, critically,
questioningly, with a certain wistfulness of expression, yet without a
throb of the desperate, death-and-life tension which another man might
have felt, which he himself understood enough to miss and to covet.

"Shall I _never_ feel?" he asked himself, and his thin face twitched and
twitched again.

"You don't speak," cried Jean lightly. "Poor Piers! he thinks it a
silly question,