erstand what I have done or left undone to distress you
like this."

He stopped, struck afresh by the physical and moral sense of the
imperfections of their relations--a sense which made him desire her
constant nearness, before his eyes, under his hand, and which, when
she was out of his sight, made her so vague, so elusive and illusory, a
promise that could not be embraced and held.

"No! I don't see clearly what you mean. Is your mind turned towards the
future?" he interpellated her with marked playfulness, because he
was ashamed to let such a word pass his lips. But all his cherished
negations were falling off him one by one.

"Because if it is so there is nothing easier than to dismiss it. In our
future, as in what people call the other life, there is nothing to be
frightened of."

She raised her eyes to him; and if nature had formed them to express
anything else but blank candour he would have learned how terrified
she was by his talk and the fact that her sinking heart loved him more
desperately than ever. He smiled at her.

"Dismiss all thought of it," he insisted. "Surely you don't suspect
after what I have heard from you, that I am anxious to return to
mankind. I! I! murder my poor Morrison! It's possible that I may be
really capable of that which they say I have done. The point is that I
haven't done it. But it is an unpleasant subject to me. I ought to be
ashamed to confess it--but it is! Let us forget it. There's that in you,
Lena, which can console me for worse things, for uglier passages. And if
we forget, there are no voices here to remind us."

She had raised her head before he paused.

"Nothing can break in on us here," he went on and, as if there had been
an appeal or a provocation in her upward glance, he bent down and took
her under the arms, raising her straight out of the chair into a sudden
and close embrace. Her alacrity to respond, which made her seem as light
as a feather, warmed his heart at that moment more than closer caresses
had done before. He had not expected that ready impulse towards himself
which had been dormant in her passive attitude. He had just felt the
clasp of her arms round his neck, when, with a slight exclamation--"He's
here!"--she disengaged herself and bolted, away into her room.

CHAPTER SIX

Heyst was astounded. Looking all round, as if to take the whole room
to witness of this outrage, he became aware of Wang materialized in the
doorway. The intrusion