th people she had
known.

"Do you know, I once thought you didn't care a jot what people said of
you?" It was not a very kind thing to say; it slipped out unawares.

But she did not take it amiss. "I used not to," she answered with her
invincible frankness. "But now--it seems--I do."

"Why, dearest? Aren't you happy enough not to care?"

For answer, she took his face between her hands, and looked at him with
such an ill-suppressed fire in her eyes that all he could do was to
draw her into his arms.

His pains for her good came to nothing. He took her his favourite
books, but--with the exception of an occasional novel--Louise was no
reader. In those he brought her, she seldom advanced further than the
first few pages; and she could sit for an hour without turning a leaf.
He had never seen her with a piece of sewing or any such feminine
employment in her hands. Nor did she spend time on her person; as a
rule, he found her in her dressing-gown. He had to give up trying to
influence her, and to become reconciled to the fact that she chose to
live only for him. But on this September day, after the unpleasant
episode with Schwarz, he had a fancy to go for a walk; Louise was
unwilling; and he felt anew how preposterous it was for her to spend
these fine autumn days, in this half-dark room.

"You are burying yourself alive--just as you did last winter."

She laid her hand on his lips. "No, no!--don't say that. Now I am
happy."

"But are you really? Sometimes I'm not sure." He was tired himself this
evening, and found it difficult to be convinced. "It troubles me when I
think how dull it must be for you. Dearest, are you--can you really be
happy like this?"

"I have you, Maurice."

"But only for an hour or two in the twenty-four. Tell me, what do you
think of?"

"Of you."

"All that time? Of poor, plain, ordinary me?"

"You are mine," she said with vehemence, and looked at him with what he
called her "hungry-beast" eyes.

"You would like to eat me, I think."

"Yes. And I should begin here; this is the bit of you I love best"--and
before he knew what she was going to do, she had stooped, and he felt
her teeth in the skin of his neck.

"That's a strange way of showing your love," he said, and involuntarily
put his hand to the spot, where two bluish-red marks had appeared.

"It's my way. I want you--I WANT you. I want to feel that you're
mine--to make you more mine than you've ever been. I wish I had a
hundr