e primal passion of motherhood. She saw
Oliver's face as it had looked on that spring afternoon when she had
first seen him; she saw it as he put the ring on her hand at the altar;
she saw it bending over her after the birth of her first child; and then
suddenly his face changed to the face of Harry, and she saw again the
little bed under the hanging sheet and herself sitting there in the
faintly quivering circle of light. She watched again the slow fall of
the leaves, one by one, as they turned at the stem and drifted against
the white curtains of the window across the street.

"Oliver," she said gently, so gently that she might have been speaking
to her sick child, "would you rather that I should go back to Dinwiddie
to-night?"

He did not answer, but, turning away from her, laid his head down on his
arm, which he had outstretched on the table, and she saw a shiver of
pain pass through his body as if it had been struck a physical blow. And
just as she had put herself aside when she bought the doll, so now she
forgot her own suffering in the longing to respond to his need.

"I can take the night train--now that I have seen the play there is no
reason why I should stay. I have got through my shopping."

Raising his head, he looked up into her face. "Whatever happens,
Virginia, will you believe that I never wanted to hurt you?" he asked.

For a moment she felt that the strain was intolerable, and a fear
entered her mind lest she should faint or weep and so make things harder
than they should be able to bear.

"You mean that something must happen--that there will be a break between
us?" she said.

Leaving the table, he walked to the window and back before he answered
her.

"I can't go on this way. I'm not that sort. A generation ago, I suppose,
we should have done it--but we've lost grip, we've lost endurance." Then
he cried out suddenly, as if he were justifying himself: "It is hell.
I've been in hell for a year--don't you see it?"

After his violence, her voice sounded almost lifeless, so quiet, so
utterly free from passion, was its quality.

"As long as that--for a year?" she asked.

"Oh, longer, but it has got worse. It has got unendurable. I've
fought--God knows I've fought--but I can't stand it. I've got to do
something. I've got to find a way. You must have seen it coming,
Virginia. You must have seen that this thing is stronger than I am."

"Do--do you want her so much?" and she, who had learned from