wn. Sherringham, at this,
rising too, took out his watch and stood a moment with his eyes bent
upon it, though without in the least seeing what the needles marked.
"You'll have to go, to reach the theatre at your usual hour, won't you?
Let me not keep you. That is, let me keep you only long enough just to
say this, once for all, as I shall never speak of it again. I'm going
away to save myself," he frankly said, planted before her and seeking
her eyes with his own. "I ought to go, no doubt, in silence, in decorum,
in virtuous submission to hard necessity--without asking for credit or
sympathy, without provoking any sort of scene or calling attention to my
fortitude. But I can't--upon my soul I can't. I can go, I can see it
through, but I can't hold my tongue. I want you to know all about it, so
that over there, when I'm bored to death, I shall at least have the
exasperatingly vain consolation of feeling that you do know--and that it
does neither you nor me any good!"

He paused a moment; on which, as quite vague, she appealed. "That I 'do
know' what?"

"That I've a consuming passion for you and that it's impossible."

"Oh impossible, my friend!" she sighed, but with a quickness in her
assent.

"Very good; it interferes, the gratification of it would interfere
fatally, with the ambition of each of us. Our ambitions are inferior and
odious, but we're tied fast to them."

"Ah why ain't we simple?" she quavered as if all touched by it. "Why
ain't we of the people--_comme tout le monde_--just a man and a girl
liking each other?"

He waited a little--she was so tenderly mocking, so sweetly ambiguous.
"Because we're precious asses! However, I'm simple enough, after all,
to care for you as I've never cared for any human creature. You have, as
it happens, a personal charm for me that no one has ever approached, and
from the top of your splendid head to the sole of your theatrical shoe
(I could go down on my face--there, abjectly--and kiss it!) every inch
of you is dear and delightful to me. Therefore good-bye."

She took this in with wider eyes: he had put the matter in a way that
struck her. For a moment, all the same, he was afraid she would reply as
on the confessed experience of so many such tributes, handsome as this
one was. But she was too much moved--the pure colour that had risen to
her face showed it--to have recourse to this particular facility. She
was moved even to the glimmer of tears, though she gave him h