nothing alive but many discreet,
lighted windows. Like veiled faces, showing no emotion, they seemed to
watch his indecision. And he thought: "Ah, well! I dare say there are
lots like me. Lots as near, and yet as far away! Lots who have to
suffer!" But what would he not have given for the throwing open of those
curtains. Then, suddenly scared by an approaching figure, he turned and
walked away.
X

At three o'clock next day he called.

In the middle of her white drawing-room, whose latticed window ran the
whole length of one wall, stood a little table on which was a silver jar
full of early larkspurs, evidently from her garden by the river. And
Lennan waited, his eyes fixed on those blossoms so like to little blue
butterflies and strange-hued crickets, tethered to the pale green stems.
In this room she passed her days, guarded from him. Once a week, at
most, he would be able to come there--once a week for an hour or two of
the hundred and sixty-eight hours that he longed to be with her.

And suddenly he was conscious of her. She had come in without sound, and
was standing by the piano, so pale, in her cream-white dress, that her
eyes looked jet black. He hardly knew that face, like a flower closed
against cold.

What had he done? What had happened in these five days to make her like
this to him? He took her hands and tried to kiss them; but she said
quickly:

"He's in!"

At that he stood silent, looking into that face, frozen to a dreadful
composure, on the breaking up of which his very life seemed to depend.
At last he said:

"What is it? Am I nothing to you, after all?"

But as soon as he had spoken he saw that he need not have asked, and
flung his arms round her. She clung to him with desperation; then freed
herself, and said:

"No, no; let's sit down quietly!"

He obeyed, half-divining, half-refusing to admit all that lay behind that
strange coldness, and this desperate embrace; all the self-pity, and
self-loathing, shame, rage, and longing of a married woman for the first
time face to face with her lover in her husband's house.

She seemed now to be trying to make him forget her strange behaviour; to
be what she had been during that fortnight in the sunshine. But,
suddenly, just moving her lips, she said:

"Quick! When can we see each other? I will come to you to tea
--to-morrow," and, following her eyes, he saw the door opening, and
Cramier coming in. Unsmiling, very big in the l