s lips.

But she repeated: "What can I do? Let me do something. Oh, I wish you
would hurt me, or be unkind to me!"

He tried to make her understand that he wished for no such humble
adoration, that, indeed, he could not be happy under it. If either was
to serve the other, it was he; he asked nothing better than to put his
hands under her feet. But he could neither coax her nor laugh her out
of her absorption: she had the will to self-abasement; and she remained
unsatisfied, waiting for the word he would not speak.

Once or twice, during these weeks, they went out in the evening, and,
in the corner of some quiet restaurant, took a festive little meal.
But, for the most part, she preferred to stay at home. She was not
dressed, she said, or she was tired, or it was too hot, or it had
rained. And Maurice did not urge her; for, on the last occasion, the
evening had been spoiled for him by the conduct of some people at a
neighbouring table; they had stared at Louise, and whispered remarks
about her. At home, she herself prepared the supper, moving indolently
about the room, her dressing-gown dragging after her, from table to
cupboard, and back again, often with a pause at his side, in which she
forgot what she had set out for. Maurice disputed each trifling service
with her; he could only think of Louise as made to be waited on, slow
to serve herself.

"Let me do it, dearest."

She had risen anew to fetch something. Now she stood beside him, and
put her arms round his neck.

"What can I do for you? Tell me what I can do," she said, and crushed
his head against her breast.

He loosened her fingers, and drew her to his knee. "What do you want me
to say, dear discontent? Do?--you were never meant to do anything in
this world. Your hands were made to lie one on top of the other...so!
Look at them! Most white and most useless!"

"There are things not made with hands," she answered obscurely. She let
him do what he liked; but she kept her face turned away; and over her
eyes passed a faint shadow of resignation.

But this mood also was a transient one; hours followed, when she no
longer sought and questioned, but when she gave, recklessly, in a wild
endeavour to lose the sense of twofold being. And before these
outbreaks, the young man was helpless. His past life, and such
experience as he had gathered in it, grew fantastic and unreal, might
all have belonged to some one else: the sole reality in a world of
shadows was t