ved would sometimes disappear for a
space, when they would suffer, and he would tell himself that he was
too old for the girl, or that he was not the kind of man who could live
with a woman, or that she was seducing him from his work, while she
would just sit numbed until the enchantment came again. Without it
there were moments when he seemed just ridiculous with his masses of
papers, and Mr Clott, and his fussy insistence on being a great
artist.... It was a keen pleasure to her to bring him back suddenly to
physical things like food and clothes and to care for him. Sometimes
he would forget everything except food and clothes, and then she lived
in a horror lest he should remain so and lose altogether the power of
abstraction and concentration which made him so singular and forceful,
and so near the man she most deeply knew him to be if only some power,
some event, even some accident, could make him realise it and force him
out of his imprisonment and almost entombment in his own thoughts.

Her will concentrated on him anew and she said to herself, 'I can do
it. I can do it. I know I can, and I will.' And when she was in
these fierce passions she used to remember her grandfather, the kindly
old bibliophile, looking anxiously at her and saying,--

'My dear, when you want a thing just look round and see if there aren't
one or two other things you want.'

But she had never understood what he meant, and she had never been able
to look round, for always there was one thing she wanted, and when she
wanted it she could not help herself, but had to sacrifice everything,
friends, possessions, even love. And as time went on, she realised
that it was not Charles she wanted so much as some submerged quality in
him. The object of her desire being simplified, her will set, only the
more firmly, even rigidly.

It made her analyse him ruthlessly; his childish lack of
self-criticism, his placidity, his insatiable vanity, his almost
deliberate exploitation of his personal charm, all these things she
cast aside and ignored. She came then to his thoughts, and here she
was baffled because she knew so little of his history. Beyond his
thoughts lay that in which she was passionately interested, but between
her and it danced innumerable Charleses all inviting her attention, all
bidding her look away from that one Charles Mann for whom she hungered
with something of the worship which religious women have for their
Saviour.

He