en, Louise. I deluded myself long
enough, God knows!"

She made a despondent gesture, and turned away. "Well, then, if either
of us should go, I'm the one. You have your work. I do nothing; I have
no ties, no friends--I never even seem to have been able to make
acquaintances. And if I went, you could stay quietly on. In time, you
would forget me.--If I only knew where to go! I am so alone, and it is
all so hard. I shall never know what it is to be happy myself, or to
make anyone else happy--never!" and she burst into tears.

It was his turn now to play the comforter. Drawing a. chair up before
her, he took her hand, and said all he could think of to console her.
He could bear anything, he told her, but to see her unhappy. All would
yet turn out to be for the best. And, on one point, she was to set her
mind at rest: her going away would not benefit him in the least. He
would never consent to stay on alone, where they had been so much
together.

"I've nothing to look forward to, nothing," she sobbed. "There's
nothing I care to live for."

As soon as she was quieter, he left her.

For an hour or more Louise lay huddled up on the sofa, with her face
pressed to her arm.

When she sat up again, she pushed back her heavy hair, and, clasping
her hands loosely round her knees, stared before her with vacant eyes.
But not for long; tired though she was, and though her head ached from
crying, there was still a deep residue of excitement in her. The level
beams of the sun were pouring blindly into the room; the air was dense
and oppressive. She rose to her feet and moved about. She did not know
what to do with herself: she would have liked to go out and walk; but
the dusty, jarring light of the summer streets frightened her. She
thought of music, of the theatre, as a remedy for the long evening that
yawned before her: then dismissed the idea from her mind. She was in
such a condition of restlessness, this night, that the fact of being
forced to sit still between two other human beings, would make her want
to scream.

The sun was getting low; the foliage of the trees in the opposite
gardens was black, with copper edges, against the refulgence of the
sky. She leaned her hands on the sill, and gazed fixedly at the stretch
of red and gold, which, like the afterglow of a fire, flamed behind the
trees. Her eyes were filled with it. She did not think or feel: she
became one, by looking, with the sight before her. As she stood ther