ny other way than this--even with a frank return
of feeling, for then they might have spoken openly, and have helped
each other. As it was, he had no thoughts but of her; his watchful
tenderness knew no bounds; but the whole responsibility was his. It was
he who had to maintain the happy mean in their relations; he to draw
the line beyond which it was better for all their after-lives that they
should not go. He affirmed to himself more than once that he loved her
the more for her complete subjection: it was in keeping with her
openhanded nature which could do nothing by halves. Yet, as time
passed, he began to suffer under it, to feel her absence of will as a
disquieting factor--to find anything to which he could compare it, he
had to hark back to the state she had been in when he first offered her
aid and comfort. That was the lassitude of grief, this of ... he could
not find a word. But it began to tell on him, and more than once made
him a little sharp with her; for, at moments, he would be seized by an
overpowering temptation to shake her out of her lassitude, to rouse her
as he very well knew she could be roused. And then, strange desires
awoke in him; he did not himself know of what he was capable.

One afternoon, they were in the woods as usual. It was very sultry; not
a leaf stirred. Louise lay with her elbow on the moss-grown roots of a
tree; her eyes were heavy. Maurice, before her, smoked a cigarette, and
watched for the least recognition of his presence, thinking, meanwhile,
that she looked better already for these days spent out-of-doors--the
tiny lines round her eyes were fast disappearing. By degrees, however,
he grew restless under her protracted silence; there was something
ominous about it. He threw his cigarette away, and, taking her hand,
began to pull apart the long fingers with the small, pink nails, or to
gather them together, and let them drop, one by one, like warm, but
lifeless things.

"What ARE you thinking of?" he asked at last, and shut her hand firmly
within his.

She started. "I? ... thinking? I don't know. I wasn't thinking at all."

"But you were. I saw it in your face. Your thoughts were miles away."

"I don't know, Maurice. I couldn't tell you now." And a moment later,
she added: "You think one must always be thinking, when one is silent."

"Yes, I'm jealous of your thoughts. You tell me nothing of them. But
now you have come back to me, and it's all right."

He drew her nearer