ngs in the face. I had grown so
used to the idea that she was to parcel out the remainder of my life,
had grown so used to the feeling that I was the integral portion of her
life ... "But I--" I said, "What is to become of me?"

She stood looking down at the ground ... for a long time. At last she
said in a low monotone:

"Oh, you must try to forget."

A new idea struck me--luminously, overwhelming. I grew reckless.
"You--you are growing considerate," I taunted. "You are not so sure, not
so cold. I notice a change in you. Upon my soul ..."

Her eyes dilated suddenly, and as suddenly closed again. She said
nothing. I grew conscious of unbearable pain, the pain of returning
life. She was going away. I should be alone. The future began to exist
again, looming up like a vessel through thick mist, silent, phantasmal,
overwhelming--a hideous future of irremediable remorse, of solitude, of
craving.

"You are going back to work with Churchill," she said suddenly.

"How did you know?" I asked breathlessly. My despair of a sort found
vent in violent interjecting of an immaterial query.

"You leave your letters about," she said, "and.... It will be best for
you."

"It will not," I said bitterly. "It could never be the same. I don't
want to see Churchill. I want...."

"You want?" she asked, in a low monotone.

"You," I answered.

She spoke at last, very slowly:

"Oh, as for me, I am going to marry Gurnard."

I don't know just what I said then, but I remember that I found myself
repeating over and over again, the phrases running metrically up and
down my mind: "You couldn't marry Gurnard; you don't know what he is.
You couldn't marry Gurnard; you don't know what he is." I don't suppose
that I knew anything to the discredit of Gurnard--but he struck me in
that way at that moment; struck me convincingly--more than any array of
facts could have done.

"Oh--as for what he is--" she said, and paused. "_I_ know...." and then
suddenly she began to speak very fast.

"Don't you see?--_can't_ you see?--that I don't marry Gurnard for what
he is in that sense, but for what he is in the other. It isn't a
marriage in your sense at all. And ... and it doesn't affect you ...
don't you _see_? We have to have done with one another, because ...
because...."

I had an inspiration.

"I believe," I said, very slowly, "I believe ... you _do_ care...."

She said nothing.

"You care," I repeated.

She spoke then with an energy th