her head against his shoulder. After a few moments she
spoke from there in a muffled, childish voice:

"What can I do about it? I don't want to be your mistress, Clive.... I
never wanted to do--anything--like that."

A deeper colour burnt his face. He said: "Could you love me enough to
marry me if I managed to free myself?"

"I have never thought of marrying you, Clive. It isn't that I couldn't
love you--that way. I suppose I could. Probably I could. Only--I don't
know anything about it--"

"Let me try to free myself, anyway."

"How is it possible?"

He said, exasperated: "Do you suppose I can endure this sort of
existence forever?"

The swift tears sprang to her eyes. "I don't know--I don't know," she
faltered. "I thought this existence of ours ideal. I thought you were
going to be happy; I supposed that our being together again would
bring happiness to us both. It doesn't! It is making us wretched. You
are not contented with our friendship!" She turned on him
passionately: "I don't wish to be your mistress. I don't want you to
make me wish to be. No girl naturally desires less than she is
entitled to, or more than the law permits--unless some man teaches her
to wish for it. Don't make such a girl of me, Clive! You--you are
beginning to do it. And I don't wish it! Truly I don't!"

In that fierce flash of candour,--of guiltless passion, she had
revealed herself. Never, until that moment, had he supposed himself so
absolutely dominant, invested with such power for good or evil. That
he could sway her one way or the other through her pure loyalty,
devotion, and sympathy he had not understood.

To do him justice he desired no such responsibility. He had meant to
be honest and generous and unselfish even when the outlook seemed most
hopeless,--when he was convinced that he had no chance of freedom.

But a man with the girl he loves in his arms might as well set a net
to catch the wind as to set boundaries to his desires. Perhaps he
could not so ardently have desired his freedom to marry her had he not
as ardently desired her love.

Love he had of her, but it was an affection utterly innocent of
passion. He knew it; she realised it; realised too that the capacity
for passion was in her. And had asked him not awaken her to it,
instinctively recoiling from it. Generous, unsullied, proudly
ignorant, she desired to remain so. Yet knew her peril; and candidly
revealed it to him in the most honest appeal ever made t