what woman in love isn't? I thought I gave you all you
needed. I was content, secure. I magnified every little demonstration.
When you touched my ear it was more to me than the embrace of another
man might have been. I have lived on one kiss of yours for a week. To
you the kiss was of no more value than a cigarette. I wish," she added
in a whisper, "I wish I were dead!"

She had spoken in a low, monotonous voice, staring haggardly at the
fire, while I knelt by her side. I murmured some banal apologia,
miserably aware that one set of words is as futile as another when one
has broken a woman's heart.

"You never knew I loved you?" she went on in the same bitter undertone.
"What kind of woman did you take me for? I have accepted help from you
to enable me to live in this flat--do you imagine I could have done such
a thing without loving you? I should have thought it was obvious in a
thousand ways."

The fire getting low, she took up the scoop for coals. Mechanically I
relieved her of the thing and fulfilled the familiar task. Neither spoke
for a long time. She remained there and I went to the window. It had
begun to rain. A barrel-organ below was playing some horrible music-hall
air, and every vibrant note was like a hammer on one's nerves. The
grinder's bedraggled Italian wife perceiving me at the window grinned up
at me with the national curve of the palm. She had a black eye which the
cacophonous fiend had probably given her, and she grinned like a happy
child of nature. Men in my position do not blacken women's eyes; but
it is only a question of manners. Was I, for that, less of a brute male
than the scowling beast at the organ?

The sudden sound of a sob made me turn to Judith, who had broken down
and was crying bitterly, her face hidden in her hands. I bent and
touched her shoulder.

"Judith--"

She flung her arms around my neck.

"I can't give you up, I can't, I can't, I can't," she cried, wildly.

For the first time in my life I heard a woman give abandoned, incoherent
utterance to an agony of passion; and it sounded horrible, like the cry
of an animal wounded to death.

A guilt-stricken creature, scarce daring to meet her eyes, I bade her
farewell. She had recovered her composure.

"Make me one little promise, Marcus, do me one little favour," she said,
with quivering lip, and letting her cold hand remain in mine. "Stay
away from her to-day. I couldn't bear to think of you and her together,
happy, lov