ging
personality.

Clara was ashamed of the jealousy which had made her snatch Rodd's work
out of his hand. It had set his passion raging against her. He who
had faced the hostility and indifference of the world all through his
ambitious youth was inflamed by the hostility of love which had shaken
but not yet uprooted his fierce will--never to compromise, but to
adhere to the logic of his vision. The rage in him was intolerable.
She said,--

'You don't like it?'

What?'

'My being at the Imperium.'

'It is not for me to like or dislike. I am not the controller of your
movements. I would never control the movements of any living creature.'

'Except in your work.'

'They work out their own salvation. They are nothing to do with me,
any more than the woman on the stairs.'

'But you love them.'

(He had made them as real to her as they were to himself.)

'They don't leave me alone. They want to live.... But they can only
live on the stage.'

He shook back his head and with supreme arrogance he said,--

'As they will when the stage is fit for them.'

She could not bear the strain any longer, and to bring him back to
actuality she said,--

'How old are you?'

'Thirty-one.'

His next move horrified her. He stepped forward, seized his
manuscript, and tore it into fragments.

'There!' he said, 'are you satisfied?'

'No. That was childish of you.... You will only sit down and begin
all over again.'

'I swear I will not. I swear it. It is finished. All that is
over.... I don't know how I shall ever begin again. Perhaps I shall
not.... All last night I was struggling to get away from it, to avoid
facing it.... They're all mean and ignoble and pitiful; brain-sick
most of them; and not fit to live in the same world as you. They're
not fit to be exhibited on the public stage, these poor nervous little
modern people with their dried instincts and their withered thoughts,
clever and helpless, rotting in inaction.... No. It has been all
wrong. I've been a fool, but I couldn't pretend.... I think I knew it
in my head, but it needed you to bring it home to me.... I'm not fit
to live in the same world as you. I ought not to have seen you
to-day....'

'Can't you laugh at yourself?'

'Laugh! Dear God, I do nothing else.'

'I mean--happily. You wouldn't be you if you didn't make mistakes--to
learn. You had to learn more about your work than just the tricks of
it. Isn't it so? You