"There's a message for you from Boston. I've made a note of it," she
replied.

"I know--Caldwell told me. But I wanted to see you before I went--I had
to see you. I sat up half the night thinking of you, I woke up thinking
of you. Aren't you glad to see me?"

She dropped the letter opener and stood silent, motionless, awaiting his
approach--a pose so eloquent of the sense of fatality strong in her as to
strike him with apprehension, unused though he was to the appraisal of
inner values. He read, darkly, something of this mystery in her eyes as
they were slowly raised to his, he felt afraid; he was swept again by
those unwonted emotions of pity and tenderness--but when she turned away
her head and he saw the bright spot of colour growing in her cheek,
spreading to her temple, suffusing her throat, when he touched the soft
contour of her arm, his passion conquered.... Still he was acutely
conscious of a resistance within her--not as before, physically directed
against him, but repudiating her own desire. She became limp in his arms,
though making no attempt to escape, and he knew that the essential self
of her he craved still evaded and defied him. And he clung to her the
more desperately--as though by crushing her peradventure he might capture
it.

"You're hurting me," she said at last, and he let her go, standing by
helplessly while she went through the movements of readjustment
instinctive to women. Even in these he read the existence of the
reservation he was loth to acknowledge.

"Don't you love me?" he said.

"I don't know."

"You do!" he said. "You--you proved it--I know it."

She went a little away from him, picking up the paper cutter, but it lay
idle in her hand.

"For God's sake, tell me what's the matter!" he exclaimed. "I can't stand
this. Janet, aren't you happy?"

She shook her head.

"Why not? I love you. I--I've never been so happy in my life as I was
this morning. Why aren't you happy--when we love each other?"

"Because I'm not."

"Why not? There's nothing I wouldn't do to make you happy--you know that.
Tell me!"

"You wouldn't understand. I couldn't make you understand."

"Is it something I've done?"

"You don't love me," she said. "You only want me. I'm not made that way,
I'm not generous enough, I guess. I've got to have work to do."

"Work to do! But you'll share my work--it's nothing without you."

She shook her head. "I knew you couldn't understand. You don't realize
how i