ause I pitied or pitied because I loved I cannot say. There
are some riddles which no one can solve."

"You never tried?"

"No. She was a noble woman, and her husband, too, was a decent fellow,
as far as men go. They were admirably fitted by nature for each other,
but matrimony dislocated them. That is another of the riddles that
frustrate us."

To avert further comment Bentham folded the page and lounged deeper into
his chair, as though overcome by fatigue.

Presently he resumed.

"That is a pansy. It was pressed in a book. It marked the place. We read
the poem together, she and I, that creature of warm wax pulsating with
childish naivetes and provoking contrariety. We read it together in the
orange gardens of the hotel looking out over a green transparency of
Mediterranean. I wonder if the scent of orange blossom, warmed by the
breath of the sea, is an intoxicant, if it soaks in at the pores and
quickens the veins to madness? Mine never seemed so palpitating with
delirium as in those days with her by my side, and the free heavens and
ocean for her setting. Yet she was ready to leave me without changing
the indefinitude which always accompanied her words and actions, to
leave me on the morrow--for I was anchored to a studio and some
commissions to which I was pledged. But though she had a certain prosaic
flippancy of speech which spelt discouragement, my heart refused a
literal translation of her idiom. On the last day I determined to sound
her, and subtly contrived to wrest her attention with this poem. We read
it together. Her soft cheek neared mine with a downy magnetism, and
vagrant fibrils of tawny hair danced with the wind against my ear. After
the second verse I placed this pansy as a mile-stone to colour our
travels on the open page. She assisted me to flatten the curling leaves,
and my huge hand extinguished her tiny one. Then I whispered--oh, never
mind what I whispered--it was a line of nature that the artistic reserve
of the poet had omitted. She closed the book and covered her face with
her hands to hide the trouble and the tears which puckered it. I made a
nest for her in my arms, but she fluttered free out into the orange
orchards and so to the house. All day I wandered about sore and sulky.
At night I tried to see her, and was informed she was ill. On the morrow
I was startled to find she had gone with her friends by the early
train."

"And did you not hear from her?"

"Yes, she left a letter b