aid.

"Jinny--_that_ ought never to have happened. You should have left that
to the other women."

"Why, George, that's what you said six years ago, if you remember."

"You _are_----"

"Yes, I know I am. You've just said so."

"My God. I don't care what you are."

He came to her and stood by her, with his face close to her, not
touching hers, but very close. His eyes searched her. She stood rigid in
her supernatural self-possession.

"Jinny, you knew. You knew all the time I cared."

"I thought I knew. I did know you cared in a way. But not in this way.
This--this is different."

She was trying to tell him that hitherto his passion had been to her
such a fiery intellectual thing that it had saved her--as by fire.

"It isn't different," he said gravely. "Jinny--if I only wanted you for
myself--but that doesn't count as much as you think it does. If you
didn't suffer----"

"I'm not suffering."

"You are. Every nerve's in torture. Haven't I seen you? You're ill with
it now, with the bare idea of going back. I want to take you out of all
that."

"No, no. It isn't that. I want to go."

"You don't. You don't want to own that you're beaten."

"No. It's simpler than that. I don't care for you, George, not--not as
you want me to."

He smiled. "How do you think I want you to?"

"Well--you know."

"I know that I care so much that it doesn't matter how you care, or
whether you care or not, so long as I can put a stop to that brutality."

"There isn't any brutality. I've got everything a woman can want."

"You've got everything any other woman can want."

She closed her eyes. "I'm quite happy."

[Illustration: She closed her eyes. "I'm quite happy."]

"For heaven's sake be honest. What is the use of lying, to me of all
people? Don't I know how happy you are?"

"But I am--I am, George. It's only this horrid, devilish thing that's
been tacked on to me----"

"That beautiful, divine thing that God made part of you, the thing that
you should have loved and made sacrifices to--if there were to have been
sacrifices--the thing you've outraged and frustrated, and done your best
to destroy, in your blind, senseless lust for what you call happiness.
You've no right to make It suffer."

"They say suffering's the best thing that can happen to it."

"Not Its suffering. _Your_ suffering is--the pain that makes you alive,
that stings and urges and keeps you going--going till you drop. To feel
the pull of the bit