hat she was incapable of love--in other words,
of giving herself wholly to anybody. A strange mystery it was that
one who could give her body so unreservedly should be so
parsimonious about her soul. To give her body and retain herself was
her gift, above all other women, thereby remaining always new,
always unexpected, and always desirable. In the few visits to Paris
which had been allowed to him by her, and by Madame Savelli, she had
repaid him for the long abstinences by an extraordinary exaltation
and rapture of body and of intellect, but he had always experienced
a strange alienation, even when he held her in his arms--perhaps
then more than ever did he feel that she never was, and never could
be, his. The thought had always been at the back of his mind:
"Tomorrow I shall be far from her, and she will be interested in
other things. All she can give me is her body--a delicious possession
it is--and a sweet friendliness, a kindliness which sometimes seems
like love, but which is not." Some men would regard her as a cold
sensualist; maybe so, though indeed he did not think that it was so,
for her kindliness precluded such a criticism. But even if it were
so, such superficial thinking about her mattered little to him who
knew her as none other could ever know her, having lived with her
since she was two or three and twenty till five and thirty--thinking
of her always, noting every faintest shade of difference, comparing
one mood with another, learning her as other men learn a difficult
text from some ancient parchment, some obscure palimpsest--that is
what she was, something written over. There was another text which
he had never been able to master; and he sat in his chair conscious
of nothing but some vague pain which--becoming more and more
definite--awoke him at last. Though he had studied her so closely
perhaps he knew as little of her as any one else, as little as she
knew of herself. Of only one thing was there any surety, and that
was she could only be saved by an appeal to the senses.

So he had done right in encouraging her friendship with Ulick,
sending Ulick to her, putting his natural jealousy aside--preferring
to suffer rather than that she should be lost. God only knew how he
was suffering day by day, hour by hour; but it were better that he
should suffer than that she should be abandoned to the spiritual
constriction of the old Roman python. It was horrible to think, but
the powerful coils would break