dear?"

Now, strangely enough, he was reminding her of Mr. Mactavish James, as
he used to be in those long conversations when he seemed so kind, and
said: "Nellie, ma wee lassie, dis onything ail ye?" and yet left her
with a suspicion that he had been asking her all the time out of
curiosity and not because he really cared for her. She was dizzied.
Whoever was speaking to her, it was not Richard. She muttered: "Yes, a
little."

He pressed her closer to him, covering her with this tenderness as with
a hot cloth rug, heavy and not fine. "Frightened of me, my darling?"

She pulled herself off his knee. "I don't know, I don't know."

"Why? Why?"

She moved into the middle of the room and looked down on the sea and the
flatlands with a feeling like thirst; and turned loyally back to
Richard, who was standing silently on the hearth-rug watching her. The
immobility of his body, and the indication in his flickering eyes and
twitching mouth that, within his quietness, his soul was dancing madly
because of some thought of her, recalled to her the night when Mr.
Philip had stood by the fire in the office in Edinburgh. That man had
hated her and this one loved her, but the difference in their aspects
was not so great as she would have hoped. She could bear it no longer,
and screamed out: "Oh! Oh! That's how Mr. Philip looked!"

It took him a minute to remember who she meant. Then his face shadowed.
"Don't remind me of him, for God's sake!" he said through his teeth. "Go
and put on your things and come out with me to the registrar."

She drew backwards from him and stood silent till she could master her
trembling. He was very like Mr. Philip. Softly she said: "You sounded
awful, as if you were telling me."

"I was."

She began to want to cry. "I'll not do anything that I'm told."

He made a clicking noise of disgust in his throat. It struck her as a
mark of debasement that their bodies were moving more swiftly than their
minds, and that each time they spoke they first gesticulated or made
some wordless sound. He burst out, more loudly than she had ever heard
him before: "Go and put on your things."

"Away yourself to the registrar," she cried more loudly still, "and tell
him he'll never marry you to me."

The ringing of her own voice and his answering clamour recalled
something to her that was dyed with a sunset light and yet was horrible.
She drew her hands across her face and tried to remember what it was;
and found