oman. I walked into love with her,"
he stammered with anger. "I regarded it as a constitutional. But the
attractive woman, though she liked me a little, weighed the pros and
cons exactly as I had done, and decided not to take her constitutional
in my impecunious company. She refused me when I was poor, and
_now_--now that I am rich--she is willing."

The harsh voice ceased suddenly. Magdalen looked for a moment at the
savage, self-tortured face, and her heart bled.

"That is how I have treated you," he said, choking with passion. "Now
you know the truth of me--for the first time. That is the kind of man I
am, hard and vindictive and selfish to the core: the man whom you have
idealised, whom you have put on a pedestal all these years."

"I have known always the kind of man you were," she said steadily. "I
never idealised you, as you call it. I loved you knowing the worst of
you. Otherwise my love could not have endured through. A foolish
idealism would have perished long ago."

"And then I come down here, on a sudden despicable impulse, intending to
use you as a weapon to strike her with, not that she is worth striking,
poor feeble pretty toy. And I encouraged myself in a thin streak of
patronising sentiment for you. I wrote a little cursed sonnet in the
train how old affection outlasts youthful passion, like violets blooming
in autumn. How loathsome! How incredibly base! And then, when my temper
is aroused by your opposition, I am dastardly enough, heartless enough
to try to humiliate you by shewing you those letters, to try to revenge
myself on you. On you, Magdalen! On you! On you!"

She did not speak nor move. Her face was awed, as the face of one who
watches beside the pangs of death or--birth.

Outside in the amber sunset a thrush piped.

"Magdalen," he said almost inarticulately, "you have never repulsed me.
Don't repulse me now, for I am very miserable. Don't pour your love into
the sand any more. Give it me instead. I am dying of thirst. Give me to
drink. You can live without me, but I can't live without you. I have
tried--I have tried everything. I am not thinking of you, only of
myself. I am only asking for myself, only impelled towards you by my own
needs. Does not that prove to you that I am at last speaking the truth?
Does not that force you to believe me when I tell you that I want you
more than anything in the world. I have wanted you all my life without
knowing it. I don't want to make amends to y