uncertainty--how willingly would he catch at any excuse for trying it
all over again. He would plan that too, till sometimes his vivid
imaginings would for a few moments almost deceive himself, and he would
realise, with a pang whose sharpness turned him sick and banished sleep,
that it was all only the pretence of a child.

Nevertheless, he did not succumb to the temptation to write to her,
probably because in his inmost heart he knew too well that if she wanted
him she would write--on some other excuse. He had been in a curious way
clear-sighted about her from the first; he had always acknowledged that
strain of insincerity, but he had fallen into the error of believing
that underneath all those shifting sands there was at last bedrock and
that it was his hand which was to discover it. He now knew that it was
nothing but sands, and a quicksand at that, yet the knowledge made the
death of his love no easier. Love cannot be killed--it always dies a
natural death; and natural deaths are slow processes. Of all the things
Blanche had said to him one at least was very true, and that was on a
day when he had been telling her the many reasons why he loved her. Her
mouth, her eyes, her soul, her voice, it had been the usual lover's
medley. She had listened, and then perhaps, with the knowledge in her
heart that disillusionment was bound to be his, said:

"There's only one safe reason for loving anyone, Ishmael, and that
is--'because I am I and you are you!'... Love a person for beauty or
brains or virtues, and they may all fail--there's only the one reason
that may be trusted not to change." And that was, of course, precisely
why he had loved her, and why the love died harder than the reasoned
loves of older years which respond to reasoning.

Affairs at home were not likely to provide a pleasurable change for
Ishmael's thoughts. Vassie, it was true, meant more to him, as he to
her, than ever before. The pain that Vassie had suffered when Killigrew
had left after his first visit, though not comparable to Ishmael's,
being disappointment and hurt vanity, yet had dowered her with a degree
of comprehension she might otherwise have missed. She felt she loved
this young brother more dearly than she had ever thought to; something
of the maternal awoke in her; she helped him in many little ways he did
not notice, getting between him and their mother's tongue, exerting
herself to make the affairs within the house run more smoothly. S