n insult to her as a woman and as----"

"A woman!" He burst out laughing harshly. "Is THAT what you call a
woman? 'Madame, ce n'est que pour rire!'"

"That is not fair!" she said. "You have no right to speak of her in that
way to anyone--especially to another woman!"

He turned away, and lay with wide-open eyes, looking out of the window
at the sinking sun. She lowered the blind and closed the shutters, that
he might not see it set; then sat down at the table by the other window
and took up her knitting again.

"Would you like the lamp?" she asked after a moment.

He shook his head.

When it grew too dark to see, Gemma rolled up her knitting and laid
it in the basket. For some time she sat with folded hands, silently
watching the Gadfly's motionless figure. The dim evening light, falling
on his face, seemed to soften away its hard, mocking, self-assertive
look, and to deepen the tragic lines about the mouth. By some fanciful
association of ideas her memory went vividly back to the stone cross
which her father had set up in memory of Arthur, and to its inscription:

"All thy waves and billows have gone over me."

An hour passed in unbroken silence. At last she rose and went softly out
of the room. Coming back with a lamp, she paused for a moment, thinking
that the Gadfly was asleep. As the light fell on his face he turned
round.

"I have made you a cup of coffee," she said, setting clown the lamp.

"Put it down a minute. Will you come here, please."

He took both her hands in his.

"I have been thinking," he said. "You are quite right; it is an ugly
tangle I have got my life into. But remember, a man does not meet every
day a woman whom he can--love; and I--I have been in deep waters. I am
afraid----"

"Afraid----"

"Of the dark. Sometimes I DARE not be alone at night. I must have
something living--something solid beside me. It is the outer darkness,
where shall be---- No, no! It's not that; that's a sixpenny toy
hell;--it's the INNER darkness. There's no weeping or gnashing of teeth
there; only silence--silence----"

His eyes dilated. She was quite still, hardly breathing till he spoke
again.

"This is all mystification to you, isn't it? You can't
understand--luckily for you. What I mean is that I have a pretty fair
chance of going mad if I try to live quite alone---- Don't think too
hardly of me, if you can help it; I am not altogether the vicious brute
you perhaps imagine me to be."

"I ca