hem in marriage I couldn't. I couldn't belong to them. They seem to
want ME, and I can't ever give it them."

"You haven't met the right woman."

"And I never shall meet the right woman while you live," he said.

She was very quiet. Now she began to feel again tired, as if she were
done.

"We'll see, my son," she answered.

The feeling that things were going in a circle made him mad.

Clara was, indeed, passionately in love with him, and he with her, as
far as passion went. In the daytime he forgot her a good deal. She was
working in the same building, but he was not aware of it. He was busy,
and her existence was of no matter to him. But all the time she was in
her Spiral room she had a sense that he was upstairs, a physical sense
of his person in the same building. Every second she expected him to
come through the door, and when he came it was a shock to her. But he
was often short and offhand with her. He gave her his directions in an
official manner, keeping her at bay. With what wits she had left she
listened to him. She dared not misunderstand or fail to remember, but
it was a cruelty to her. She wanted to touch his chest. She knew exactly
how his breast was shapen under the waistcoat, and she wanted to touch
it. It maddened her to hear his mechanical voice giving orders about
the work. She wanted to break through the sham of it, smash the trivial
coating of business which covered him with hardness, get at the man
again; but she was afraid, and before she could feel one touch of his
warmth he was gone, and she ached again.

He knew that she was dreary every evening she did not see him, so he
gave her a good deal of his time. The days were often a misery to her,
but the evenings and the nights were usually a bliss to them both. Then
they were silent. For hours they sat together, or walked together in the
dark, and talked only a few, almost meaningless words. But he had her
hand in his, and her bosom left its warmth in his chest, making him feel
whole.

One evening they were walking down by the canal, and something was
troubling him. She knew she had not got him. All the time he whistled
softly and persistently to himself. She listened, feeling she could
learn more from his whistling than from his speech. It was a sad
dissatisfied tune--a tune that made her feel he would not stay with her.
She walked on in silence. When they came to the swing bridge he sat down
on the great pole, looking at the stars in the