to risk the
destruction of this globe.

"Did you treat her badly?" she asked rather mechanically, walking on.

"I could defend myself," he said, almost defiantly. "But what's the use,
if one feels a thing? I won't be with her a minute," he said. "I'll just
tell her--"

"Of course, you must tell her," said Katharine, and now felt anxious
for him to do what appeared to be necessary if he, too, were to hold his
globe for a moment round, whole, and entire.

"I wish--I wish--" she sighed, for melancholy came over her and obscured
at least a section of her clear vision. The globe swam before her as if
obscured by tears.

"I regret nothing," said Ralph firmly. She leant towards him almost as
if she could thus see what he saw. She thought how obscure he still was
to her, save only that more and more constantly he appeared to her a
fire burning through its smoke, a source of life.

"Go on," she said. "You regret nothing--"

"Nothing--nothing," he repeated.

"What a fire!" she thought to herself. She thought of him blazing
splendidly in the night, yet so obscure that to hold his arm, as she
held it, was only to touch the opaque substance surrounding the flame
that roared upwards.

"Why nothing?" she asked hurriedly, in order that he might say more and
so make more splendid, more red, more darkly intertwined with smoke this
flame rushing upwards.

"What are you thinking of, Katharine?" he asked suspiciously, noticing
her tone of dreaminess and the inapt words.

"I was thinking of you--yes, I swear it. Always of you, but you take
such strange shapes in my mind. You've destroyed my loneliness. Am I to
tell you how I see you? No, tell me--tell me from the beginning."

Beginning with spasmodic words, he went on to speak more and more
fluently, more and more passionately, feeling her leaning towards him,
listening with wonder like a child, with gratitude like a woman. She
interrupted him gravely now and then.

"But it was foolish to stand outside and look at the windows. Suppose
William hadn't seen you. Would you have gone to bed?"

He capped her reproof with wonderment that a woman of her age could have
stood in Kingsway looking at the traffic until she forgot.

"But it was then I first knew I loved you!" she exclaimed.

"Tell me from the beginning," he begged her.

"No, I'm a person who can't tell things," she pleaded. "I shall say
something ridiculous--something about flames--fires. No, I can't tell
you."

Bu