appy man."

"Still--there it is. We can't get over it."

"_You_ could have got over it. It wasn't made for you."

"It was made for all women. And for one who has been wrecked by it there
are millions who have been saved. It was made for me more than any of
them."

"If you prefer other women's conventions to your own happiness."

"Would it have been happiness to have given my heart and my soul to
somebody who had no use for them and showed it?"

"You insist that I showed it?"

"You showed me plainly that it wasn't my heart and my soul you wanted."

"There you're wrong. There was a moment--if you'd only known it."

"I did know."

"What did you know?"

"I knew there was some power I had, if I had known how to use it."

"And didn't you?"

"I don't know. You see, I didn't try."

"You know how to use it now, I can tell you, with a vengeance."

"No. It isn't the same power, I think."

"At any rate you knew that it was touch and go with me? That if _you_'d
chosen you might have done anything with me?"

"I knew that any other woman could have done the same."

"Then why not you?"

"I? I didn't want to hold you that way. I had some decency. I loved my
poor friend too much to take him at a disadvantage."

"Good God! So _that_ was your view of it? I was sacrificed to your
invincible ignorance."

"Oh no, to my knowledge. Or shall we say to an honourable scruple?"

"Honourable?"

"Yes. The whole honour of women lies in that."

"I hope you see where the whole honour of women has landed us at last."

They had reached the lane leading to their farm. Its depth held them
closer than the twilight held. The trees guarded them. Every green
branch roofed a hollow deep with haze.

"If you were a cold woman I could understand it."

"_I_ couldn't. It's because I was anything but cold."

"I know. You were afraid then."

"Yes. I was mortally afraid."

Above the lane, on the slope of the foot hills, they could see their
farm, a dim grey roof in a ring of ash-trees. A dim green field opened
out below it, fan-wise with a wild edge that touched the moor. It seemed
to her with her altered memory that it was home they were drawing near.

"George," she said, "you know women as God knows them; why didn't you
know me? Can't you see what I was afraid of? What we're all afraid of?
What we're eternally trying to escape from? The thing that hunts us
down, that turns again and rends us."

"You thought you saw that in me?"