when you found that your clothes had been left behind.
Still, where's the fault in that? I could promise you never to interfere
with your clothes again. I admit I was cross when I found you upstairs
with Henry. Perhaps I showed it too openly. But that's not unreasonable
either when one's engaged. Ask your mother. And now this terrible
thing--" He broke off, unable for the moment to proceed any further.
"This decision you say you've come to--have you discussed it with any
one? Your mother, for example, or Henry?"

"No, no, of course not," she said, stirring the leaves with her hand.
"But you don't understand me, William--"

"Help me to understand you--"

"You don't understand, I mean, my real feelings; how could you? I've
only now faced them myself. But I haven't got the sort of feeling--love,
I mean--I don't know what to call it"--she looked vaguely towards the
horizon sunk under mist--"but, anyhow, without it our marriage would be
a farce--"

"How a farce?" he asked. "But this kind of analysis is disastrous!" he
exclaimed.

"I should have done it before," she said gloomily.

"You make yourself think things you don't think," he continued, becoming
demonstrative with his hands, as his manner was. "Believe me, Katharine,
before we came here we were perfectly happy. You were full of plans for
our house--the chair-covers, don't you remember?--like any other woman
who is about to be married. Now, for no reason whatever, you begin to
fret about your feeling and about my feeling, with the usual result. I
assure you, Katharine, I've been through it all myself. At one time I
was always asking myself absurd questions which came to nothing either.
What you want, if I may say so, is some occupation to take you out
of yourself when this morbid mood comes on. If it hadn't been for my
poetry, I assure you, I should often have been very much in the same
state myself. To let you into a secret," he continued, with his little
chuckle, which now sounded almost assured, "I've often gone home from
seeing you in such a state of nerves that I had to force myself to write
a page or two before I could get you out of my head. Ask Denham; he'll
tell you how he met me one night; he'll tell you what a state he found
me in."

Katharine started with displeasure at the mention of Ralph's name. The
thought of the conversation in which her conduct had been made a subject
for discussion with Denham roused her anger; but, as she instantly felt,
sh