friendship, which you don't
want perhaps, and--er--good advice, which you won't take."

But she was looking beyond him, far away.

"As I can't possibly ask you to--accept my conditions, perhaps the
cleverest thing I could do would be to go away and never see you again.
There's no other alternative."

Her lips parted as if she would have spoken, but no words came. They
searched each other's faces, the woman thirsting for life, for love; the
man thirsting too--for knowledge. And he knew.

It was his turn to look away from her; and as he fixed his eyes absently
on the corner where the Psyche stood motionless on her pedestal, he
noticed, as people will notice at these moments, the ironical suggestion
of the torso, with the nasty Malay creese hanging over its head. Psyche
and--the sword of Damocles.

"I don't want you to go away," she said at last.

"I am going, all the same. For a little while--a fortnight perhaps. I
want you to have time to think." He was not by any means sure what he
meant by that. He had solved his problem, though not quite as he had
intended to, and that was enough for him. And yet his conscience (not
the literary one, but the other) would not altogether acquit him of
treachery to Audrey. Instead of going away, as he ought to have done, he
sat on talking, in the hope of silencing the reproachful voice inside
him, of setting things on their ordinary footing again. But this was
impossible at the moment. They were talking now across some thin barrier
woven of trivialities, as it were some half-transparent Japanese screen,
with all sorts of frivolous figures painted on it in an absurd
perspective. And behind this flimsy partition their human life went on,
each soul playing its part more or less earnestly in a little tragedy of
temptation. Each knew all the time what the other was doing; though
Wyndham had still the advantage of Audrey in this respect. Which of them
would first have the courage to pull down the screen and face the solid,
impenetrable truth?

Neither of them attempted it,--they dared not. After half an hour's
commonplaces Wyndham left her to think. He too had some matter for
reflection. He was not inhuman, and if at times he seemed so, he had
ways of reconciling his inhumanity to his conscience. He told himself
that his strictly impartial attitude as the student of human nature
enabled him to do these things. He was as a higher intelligence, looking
down on the crowd of struggling, s