his frowning forehead, and made the smile on his lips
a grimace.

"But it's been good, though, hasn't it, Charity?... What's the
matter--why do you stand there staring at me? Haven't the days here been
good?" He went up to her and caught her to his breast. "And there'll be
others--lots of others... jollier... even jollier... won't there,
darling?"

He turned her head back, feeling for the curve of her throat below the
ear, and kissing here there, and on the hair and eyes and lips. She
clung to him desperately, and as he drew her to his knees on the couch
she felt as if they were being sucked down together into some bottomless
abyss.

XV

That night, as usual, they said good-bye at the wood's edge.

Harney was to leave the next morning early. He asked Charity to say
nothing of their plans till his return, and, strangely even to herself,
she was glad of the postponement. A leaden weight of shame hung on her,
benumbing every other sensation, and she bade him good-bye with hardly
a sign of emotion. His reiterated promises to return seemed almost
wounding. She had no doubt that he intended to come back; her doubts
were far deeper and less definable.

Since the fanciful vision of the future that had flitted through her
imagination at their first meeting she had hardly ever thought of his
marrying her. She had not had to put the thought from her mind; it had
not been there. If ever she looked ahead she felt instinctively that the
gulf between them was too deep, and that the bridge their passion had
flung across it was as insubstantial as a rainbow. But she seldom
looked ahead; each day was so rich that it absorbed her.... Now her first
feeling was that everything would be different, and that she herself
would be a different being to Harney. Instead of remaining separate and
absolute, she would be compared with other people, and unknown things
would be expected of her. She was too proud to be afraid, but the
freedom of her spirit drooped....

Harney had not fixed any date for his return; he had said he would have
to look about first, and settle things. He had promised to write as soon
as there was anything definite to say, and had left her his address, and
asked her to write also. But the address frightened her. It was in New
York, at a club with a long name in Fifth Avenue: it seemed to raise an
insurmountable barrier between them. Once or twice, in the first days,
she got out a sheet of paper, and sat looking