dream of your work. All that we should
have to leave behind. We should specialize, in our own scandal. We
should run away just for one thing. To think, by sharing the oldest,
simplest, dearest indulgences in the world, that we had got each other.
When really we had lost each other, lost all that mattered...."

Her face was flushed with the earnestness of her conviction. Her eyes
were bright with tears. "Don't think I don't love you. It's so hard to
say all this. Somehow it seems like going back on something--something
supreme. Our instincts have got us.... Don't think I'd hold myself from
you, dear. I'd give myself to you with both hands. I love you--When a
woman loves--I at any rate--she loves altogether. But this thing--I am
convinced--cannot be. I must go my own way, the way I have to go. My
father is the man, obstinate, more than half a savage. For me--I know
it--he has the jealousy of ten husbands. If you take me--If our secret
becomes manifest--If you are to take me and keep me, then his life and
your life will become wholly this Feud, nothing but this Feud. You have
to fight him anyhow--that is why I of all people must keep out of
the quarrel. For him, it would be an immense excitement, full of the
possibility of fierce satisfactions; for you, whether you won me or lost
me, it would be utter waste and ruin."

She paused and then went on:--"And for me too, waste and ruin. I shall
be a woman fought over. I shall be fought over as dogs fight over a
bone. I shall sink back to the level of Helen of Troy. I shall cease to
be a free citizen, a responsible free person. Whether you win me or lose
me it will be waste and ruin for us both. Your Fuel Commission will go
to pieces, all the wide, enduring work you have set me dreaming about
will go the same way. We shall just be another romantic story.... No!"

Sir Richmond sat still, a little like a sullen child, she thought. "I
hate all this," he said slowly. "I didn't think of your father before,
and now I think of him it sets me bristling for a fight. It makes
all this harder to give up. And yet, do you know, in the night I was
thinking, I was coming to conclusions, very like yours. For quite other
reasons. I thought we ought not to--We have to keep friends anyhow and
hear of each other?"

"That goes without saying."

"I thought we ought not to go on to be lovers in any way that Would
affect you, touch you too closely.... I was sorry--I had kissed you."

"Not I. No. D