nature was in rebellion, she drew back. He felt her withdraw. His hands
dropped.

She burst into tears, suddenly hiding her face in her hands as she used
to do when she was a little girl.

"Oh, Paul," she wept. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm wicked. I
can't--"

He got up and stood with his back to her, looking towards the night sky
that flashed now with stars.

She controlled herself, feeling desperately that their whole future
together hung on the approaching minutes. She went up to him, standing
at first timidly behind him, then putting her hand through his arm.

"Paul. It isn't so hopeless. If I can't give you that I can give you
everything else. I told you from the first that I couldn't help loving
Martin. All that kind of love I gave to him, but we can be friends. I
want a friend so badly. If we're both lonely we can come together
closer and closer, and perhaps, later on--"

But she could not go on. She knew that she would never forget Martin,
that she would never love Paul. These two things were so clear to her
that she could not pretend. As the darkness gathered the wood into its
arms and the last twitter of the birds sank into silence, she felt that
she too was being caught into some silent blackness. The sky was pale
green, the stars so bright that the rest of the world seemed to lie in
dim shadow. She could scarcely see Paul now; when he spoke his voice
came, disembodied, out of the dusk.

"You'll never forget him, then?" at last he asked.

"No."

"You're strange. You don't belong to us. I should have seen that at the
beginning. I knew nothing about women and thought that all that I
wanted--oh God, why should I be so tempted? I've been a good man ..."
Then he came close to her and put his hand on her shoulder and even
drew her to him. "I won't bother you any more, Maggie. I'll conquer
this. We'll be friends as you want. It isn't fair to you--"

She felt the control that he was keeping on himself and she admired
him. Nevertheless she knew, young though she was, that if she let him
go now she was losing him for ever. The strangest pang of loneliness
and isolation seized her. If Paul left her and Martin wasn't there, she
was lonely indeed. She saw quite clearly how his laziness would come to
his aid. He would summon first his virtue and his religion, and twenty
years of abstinence would soon reassert their sway; then he would slip
back into the old, lazy, self-complacent being that he had been befo