arth.

He had kissed her as a formal declaration; what must come would come. "I
was an imbecile," she spoke in a voice at once listless and touched with
bitterness; "Arcadia," she laughed. "I thought it was different here,
that you were different; that feeling in my heart--but it's gone now,
dead. I suppose I should thank you. But, do you know, I regret it; I
would rather have stayed at St. James all my life and kept that single
little delusion, longing. The premonition was nonsense, too; nothing
new, unexpected, can happen. Kisses are almost the oldest things in the
world, kisses and their results. What is there to be afraid of? You see,
I learned it all quite young.

"I am an imbecile; only it came so suddenly. You would laugh at me if
you knew what I was thinking. I can even manage a smile at myself." She
appeared older, the Mrs. Winscombe who had first come to Myrtle Forge;
her mouth was flippant. "The eternal Suzanna," she remarked, "the
monotonous elders or younger." He paid little heed to her words; the
coldness, the indifference, were fast leaving him. His heart was like
the trip hammer at the Forge. Yellow wine. He was still standing above
her, and he took her hands in his. She put up her face with a movement
of bravado, of mockery, which he ignored.

"I didn't choose it," he told her; "it's ruined all that I was. Now, I
don't care; there is nothing else. One thing you are wrong about--if
there had been another in your life like myself you wouldn't be here
with--as you are. I'm certain of that. It's the only thing I do know. My
feeling may be a terrible misfortune; I didn't make it; I can't see the
end. There isn't any, I think." He pressed her hands to his throat with
a gesture that half dragged her from the sofa. A deeper colour stained
her cheeks, and her breath caught. "Endless," he repeated, losing the
word on her lips. She wilted into a corner of the sofa, and he strode
over to the fire, stood gazing blindly at the pulsating embers. Howat
returned to her almost immediately, but she made no sign of his
nearness. The bitterness had left her face, she appeared weary, pallid;
she sat heedlessly crumpling her flounces, a hand bent back on its
wrist.

"I think it is something in myself," she said presently; "something a
little wrong that I'm dreadfully tired of. Always men. Out here a Howat
Penny, just like any fribble about the Court. God, I'd like to be that
girl across the road, in the barnyard." He was