ce together.

"But you know ME pretty well," he said.

She did not answer.

"Did you know Baxter as well as you know me?" he asked.

"He wouldn't let me," she said.

"And I have let you know me?"

"It's what men WON'T let you do. They won't let you get really near to
them," she said.

"And haven't I let you?"

"Yes," she answered slowly; "but you've never come near to me. You can't
come out of yourself, you can't. Baxter could do that better than you."

He walked on pondering. He was angry with her for preferring Baxter to
him.

"You begin to value Baxter now you've not got him," he said.

"No; I can only see where he was different from you."

But he felt she had a grudge against him.

One evening, as they were coming home over the fields, she startled him
by asking:

"Do you think it's worth it--the--the sex part?"

"The act of loving, itself?"

"Yes; is it worth anything to you?"

"But how can you separate it?" he said. "It's the culmination of
everything. All our intimacy culminates then."

"Not for me," she said.

He was silent. A flash of hate for her came up. After all, she was
dissatisfied with him, even there, where he thought they fulfilled each
other. But he believed her too implicitly.

"I feel," she continued slowly, "as if I hadn't got you, as if all of
you weren't there, and as if it weren't ME you were taking--"

"Who, then?"

"Something just for yourself. It has been fine, so that I daren't think
of it. But is it ME you want, or is it IT?"

He again felt guilty. Did he leave Clara out of count, and take simply
women? But he thought that was splitting a hair.

"When I had Baxter, actually had him, then I DID feel as if I had all of
him," she said.

"And it was better?" he asked.

"Yes, yes; it was more whole. I don't say you haven't given me more than
he ever gave me."

"Or could give you."

"Yes, perhaps; but you've never given me yourself."

He knitted his brows angrily.

"If I start to make love to you," he said, "I just go like a leaf down
the wind."

"And leave me out of count," she said.

"And then is it nothing to you?" he asked, almost rigid with chagrin.

"It's something; and sometimes you have carried me away--right away--I
know--and--I reverence you for it--but--"

"Don't 'but' me," he said, kissing her quickly, as a fire ran through
him.

She submitted, and was silent.

It was true as he said. As a rule, when he started love-making, the
emotio