his soft human body that he held in his arms.

Point by point, however, each of which wounded, consciousness fought
itself free again. Such violent extremes of emotion were, in truth,
contrary to his nature. They made him unsure. And, as the pendulum
swung back, something vital in him made protest.

"Sometimes, it seems as if there were something else ... something
that's not love at all ... more like hate--yes, as if you hated me ...
would like to kill me."

Her whole body was moved by the sigh she drew.

"If I only could! Then I should know that you were mine indeed."

"Is it possible for me to be more yours than I am?"

"Part of you would never be mine, though we spent all our lives
together."

He roused himself from his lethargy. "How can you say that?--And yet I
think I know what you mean. It's like a kind of rage that comes over
one--Yes, I've felt it, too. Listen, darling!--there are things one
can't say in daylight. I, too, have felt ... sometimes ... that in
spite of all my love for you--I mean our love for each other--yet there
was still something, a part of you, I had no power over. The real you
is something--some one I don't really know in spite of all the kisses.
Yes"--and the more he tried to find words for what he meant, the more
convinced he grew of its truth. "Nothing keeps us apart; you love me,
are here in my arms, and yet ...yet there's a bit of you I can't
influence--that is still strange to me. How often I have to ask you why
you look at me in a certain way, or what you are thinking of! I never
know your thoughts; I've never once been able to read them; you always
keep something back.--Why is it, dear? Is it my fault? If I could just
once get at your real self--if I knew that once, only once, in all
these weeks, you had been mine--every bit of you--then ... yes, then, I
believe I would be satisfied to ... to--I don't know what!"

He had spoken in an even, monotonous voice, almost more to himself than
to her. Now, however, he was forced to the opposite extreme of anxious
solicitude. "No, no, I didn't really mean it. Darling! ... hush!--don't
cry like that. I didn't know what I was saying; it isn't true, not a
word of it."

She had flung herself across him; her own elemental weeping shook her
from head to foot. He realised, for the first time, the depth and
strength of it, now that it, as it were, went through him, too.
Gathering her to him, he made wild and foolish promises. But nothing
s