e,
she dabbed powder on her face out of a small oval glass pot--a habit of
hers to which he had never grown accustomed.

"Stop putting that stuff on your face! You know I hate it."

Her only answer was to dab anew, and so thickly that the powder was
strewn over the front of her dress and the floor. The clothes she had
taken off were flung on a chair; as she brushed past them, they fell to
the ground. She did not stoop to pick them up, but pushed them out of
the way with her foot. Sitting down in the rocking-chair, she closed
her eyes, and spread her arms out along the arms of the chair.

He could not see her from where he lay, but she was within reach of
him, and, after a brief, unhappy silence, he put out his hand and drew
the chair towards him, urging it forward, inch by inch, until it was
beside the sofa. Then he pulled her head down, so that it also lay on
the cushion, and he could feel her hair against his.

"How you hate me!" he said in a low voice, and as though he were
speaking to himself. Laying her hand on his forehead, he made of it a
screen for his eyes. "Who could have foreseen this!" he said again, in
the same toneless way.

Louise lay still, and did not speak.

"Why do you stay with me?" he went on, looking out from under her hand.
"I often ask myself that. For you're free to come and go as you choose."

Her eyes opened at this, though he did not see it. "And I choose to
stay here! How often am I to tell you that? Why do you come back on it
to-night? I'm tired--tired."

"I know you are. I saw it as soon as you came in. It's been a tiring
day, and you probably ... walked too far."

With a jerk, she drew her hand out of his, and sat upright in her
chair. Something, a mere tone, the slight pause, in his apparently
harmless words, incensed her. "Too far, did I?--Oh, to-night at least,
be honest! Why don't you ask me straight out where I have been?--and
what I have done? Can't you, for once, be man enough to put an open
question?"

"Nothing was further from my mind than to make implications. It's you
who're so suspicious. Just as if you had a bad conscience--something
really to conceal."

"Take care!--or I shall tell you--where I've been! And you might regret
it."

"No. For God's sake!--no more confessions!"

She laughed, and lay back. But a moment later, she cried out: "Why
don't you go away yourself? You know I loathe the sight of you; and yet
you stick on here like like a leech. Go away, oh