way. It must never happen again. She, too, had doubtless become
sensible of this, in the course of the past three days. But had she?
Could he say that? What had she thought?--what had she felt? And he
told himself that was just what he would never know.

He saw her as she had lain that morning, her arms long and white on the
coverlet. He recalled all he had said, and tried to piece things
together; an inner meaning seemed to be eluding him. Again, in memory,
he heard the half-stifled cry that had drawn him to her side, felt her
hands in his, the springy resistance of her hair, the delicate skin of
her eyelids. Then, he had not understood the sudden impulse that had
made him spring to his feet. But now, as he lay in the dusk, and summed
up these things, a new thought, or hardly a thought so much as an
intuition, flashed through his mind, instantly to take entire
possession of him--just as if it had all along been present, in
waiting. Simultaneously, the colour mounted to his face: he refused to
harbour such a thought, and put it from him, angry with himself. But it
was not to be kept down; it rose again, in an inexplicable way--this
suggestion, which was like a slur cast on her. Why, he demanded of
himself, should it not have occurred to him before?--once, twenty, a
hundred times? For the same thing had often happened: times without
number, she had striven to keep him at her side. Was its presence
to-day a result of his aimless irritation? Or was it because, after
holding him at arm's length for three whole days, she had asked, on
returning to him, neither affection nor comradeship, only the blind
gratification of sense?

He did not know. But forgotten hints and trifles--words, acts,
looks--which he had never before considered consciously, now recurred
to him as damning evidence. With his arm still across his eyes, he lay
and let it work in him; let doubts and frightful uncertainties grow up
in his brain; suffered the most horrible suffering of all--doubt of the
one beloved. He seemed to be looking at things from a new point, seeing
them in different proportions--all his own poor hopes and beliefs as
well and, while the spasm of distrust lasted, he felt inclined to doubt
whether she had ever really cared for him. He even questioned his own
feeling for her, seeking to discover whether it, too, had not been
based on a mere sensual fancy. He saw them satisfying an instinct,
without reason and without nobility. And, by this