greater torture in the world
than at the same time to love and to contemn.

Philip, burrowing as was his habit into the state of his feelings,
discussing with himself continually his condition, came to the conclusion
that he could only cure himself of his degrading passion by making Mildred
his mistress. It was sexual hunger that he suffered from, and if he could
satisfy this he might free himself from the intolerable chains that bound
him. He knew that Mildred did not care for him at all in that way. When he
kissed her passionately she withdrew herself from him with instinctive
distaste. She had no sensuality. Sometimes he had tried to make her
jealous by talking of adventures in Paris, but they did not interest her;
once or twice he had sat at other tables in the tea-shop and affected to
flirt with the waitress who attended them, but she was entirely
indifferent. He could see that it was no pretence on her part.

"You didn't mind my not sitting at one of your tables this afternoon?" he
asked once, when he was walking to the station with her. "Yours seemed to
be all full."

This was not a fact, but she did not contradict him. Even if his desertion
meant nothing to her he would have been grateful if she had pretended it
did. A reproach would have been balm to his soul.

"I think it's silly of you to sit at the same table every day. You ought
to give the other girls a turn now and again."

But the more he thought of it the more he was convinced that complete
surrender on her part was his only way to freedom. He was like a knight of
old, metamorphosed by magic spells, who sought the potions which should
restore him to his fair and proper form. Philip had only one hope. Mildred
greatly desired to go to Paris. To her, as to most English people, it was
the centre of gaiety and fashion: she had heard of the Magasin du Louvre,
where you could get the very latest thing for about half the price you had
to pay in London; a friend of hers had passed her honeymoon in Paris and
had spent all day at the Louvre; and she and her husband, my dear, they
never went to bed till six in the morning all the time they were there;
the Moulin Rouge and I don't know what all. Philip did not care that if
she yielded to his desires it would only be the unwilling price she paid
for the gratification of her wish. He did not care upon what terms he
satisfied his passion. He had even had a mad, melodramatic idea to drug
her. He had plied her with l