ve grown years older. "Love is something quite different.
It takes everything just as it is. You have never really loved me.".

"I have never really loved you?"

He repeated the words after her, as if he did not understand them, and
with his right hand grasped the table; the ground seemed to be slipping
from under his feet. But Louise did not offer to retract what she had
said, and Maurice had a moment of bewilderment: there, not three yards
from him, sat the woman who was the centre of his life; Louise sat
there, and with all appearance of believing it, could cast doubts on
his love for her. At the thought of it, he was exasperated.

"I not love you!"

His voice was rough, had escaped control. "You have only to lift your
finger, and I'll throw myself from that window on to the pavement."

Louise sat as if turned to stone.

"Don't you hear?" he cried more loudly. "Look up! ... tell me to do it!"

Still she did not move.

"Louise, Louise!" he implored, throwing himself down before her. "Speak
to me! Don't you hear me?--Louise!"

"Oh, yes, I hear," she said at last. "I hear how ready you are with
promises you know you will not be asked to keep. But the small,
everyday things--those are what you won't do for me."

"Tell me ... tell me what I shall do!"

"All I ask of you is to be happy. And to let me be happy, too."

He stammered promises and entreaties. Never, never again!--if only this
once she would forgive him; if only she would smile at him, and let the
light come back to her eyes. He had not been responsible for his
actions this evening.

"It was more of a strain than I knew. And after it was over, I had to
vent my disappointment somehow; and it was you, poor darling, who
suffered. Forgive me, Louise!--But try, dear, a little to understand
why it was. Can't you see that I was only like that through fear--yes,
fear!--that somehow you might slip from me. I can't help feeling, one
day you will have had enough of me, and will see me for what I really
am."

He tried to put his arms round her, but she held back: she had no
desire to be reconciled. The sole response she made to his beseeching
words was: "I want to be happy."

"But you shall.--Do you think I live for anything else? Only forgive
me! Remember the happiest hours we have spent together. Come back to
me; be mine again! Tell me I am forgiven."

He was in despair; he could not get at her, under her coating of
insensibility. And since his words h