ons were separate. Where he wanted to go she could
not come with him. They would have to part sooner or later. Even if they
married, and were faithful to each other, still he would have to leave
her, go on alone, and she would only have to attend to him when he came
home. But it was not possible. Each wanted a mate to go side by side
with.

Clara had gone to live with her mother upon Mapperley Plains. One
evening, as Paul and she were walking along Woodborough Road, they met
Dawes. Morel knew something about the bearing of the man approaching,
but he was absorbed in his thinking at the moment, so that only his
artist's eye watched the form of the stranger. Then he suddenly turned
to Clara with a laugh, and put his hand on her shoulder, saying,
laughing:

"But we walk side by side, and yet I'm in London arguing with an
imaginary Orpen; and where are you?"

At that instant Dawes passed, almost touching Morel. The young man
glanced, saw the dark brown eyes burning, full of hate and yet tired.

"Who was that?" he asked of Clara.

"It was Baxter," she replied.

Paul took his hand from her shoulder and glanced round; then he saw
again distinctly the man's form as it approached him. Dawes still walked
erect, with his fine shoulders flung back, and his face lifted; but
there was a furtive look in his eyes that gave one the impression he was
trying to get unnoticed past every person he met, glancing suspiciously
to see what they thought of him. And his hands seemed to be wanting to
hide. He wore old clothes, the trousers were torn at the knee, and the
handkerchief tied round his throat was dirty; but his cap was still
defiantly over one eye. As she saw him, Clara felt guilty. There was
a tiredness and despair on his face that made her hate him, because it
hurt her.

"He looks shady," said Paul.

But the note of pity in his voice reproached her, and made her feel
hard.

"His true commonness comes out," she answered.

"Do you hate him?" he asked.

"You talk," she said, "about the cruelty of women; I wish you knew the
cruelty of men in their brute force. They simply don't know that the
woman exists."

"Don't I?" he said.

"No," she answered.

"Don't I know you exist?"

"About ME you know nothing," she said bitterly--"about ME!"

"No more than Baxter knew?" he asked.

"Perhaps not as much."

He felt puzzled, and helpless, and angry. There she walked unknown to
him, though they had been through such experien