. It would not do for
him to be cut off from social pleasures and duties, and then some day
feel that he owed his starvation to her. To go up to London, too, every
day was tiring, and she persuaded him to take a set of residential
chambers in the Temple, and sleep there three nights a week. In spite
of all his entreaties, she herself never went to those chambers, staying
always at Bury Street when she came up. A kind of superstition prevented
her; she would not risk making him feel that she was hanging round his
neck. Besides, she wanted to keep herself desirable--so little a matter
of course that he would hanker after her when he was away. And she never
asked him where he went or whom he saw. But, sometimes, she wondered
whether he could still be quite faithful to her in thought, love her as
he used to; and joy would go down behind a heavy bank of clouds, till,
at his return, the sun came out again. Love such as hers--passionate,
adoring, protective, longing to sacrifice itself, to give all that it
had to him, yet secretly demanding all his love in return--for how
could a proud woman love one who did not love her?--such love as this is
always longing for a union more complete than it is likely to get in
a world where all things move and change. But against the grip of this
love she never dreamed of fighting now. From the moment when she
knew she must cling to him rather than to her baby, she had made no
reservations; all her eggs were in one basket, as her father's had been
before her--all!

The moonlight was shining full on the old bureau and a vase of tulips
standing there, giving those flowers colour that was not colour, and
an unnamed look, as if they came from a world which no human enters. It
glinted on a bronze bust of old Voltaire, which she had bought him for
a Christmas present, so that the great writer seemed to be smiling from
the hollows of his eyes. Gyp turned the bust a little, to catch the
light on its far cheek; a letter was disclosed between it and the
oak. She drew it out thinking: 'Bless him! He uses everything for
paper-weights'; and, in the strange light, its first words caught her
eyes:

"DEAR BRYAN,

"But I say--you ARE wasting yourself--"

She laid it down, methodically pushing it back under the bust. Perhaps
he had put it there on purpose! She got up and went to the window, to
check the temptation to read the rest of that letter and see from whom
it was. No! She did not admit that she