eturned, but he dropped
reluctantly into a hard, stiff chair opposite her.

"I'll tell you what there is to talk about," said Christine. "Something
that has never been mentioned in all the discussions that have been
taking place. And that is my feelings."

"Your feelings," Riatt began, rather contemptuously, but she stopped him.

"No," she said, "you shan't say what you were going to. My feelings,
my feelings for you. You've told me that you did _not_ love me, that
you despised me, that you _did_ love me, but you've never asked how I
felt to you."

"But you've made it so clear. You felt that, in default of anything else,
I would do."

She leaned across the table and looked at him gravely. "Max," she said,
"I love you."

He made no motion, not even one of contempt, and so she got up, and
coming round the table, she knelt down beside him and put her arms
tightly about him. Still he did not move, except that his hands, which
had been hanging at his sides, now gripped the edges of the chair with
the rigidity of iron, and he said in a voice which sounded even in his
own ears like that of a total stranger:

"What folly this is, Christine!"

"Why is it folly?"

"If you had said this six weeks ago, while I still had enough money to--"

"If I had said it then you wouldn't have believed me." He looked at her;
it was true.

"But now," she went on rapidly, "you must believe me. If I come now to
live with you and work for you, no one can accuse me of mercenary
motives--not even you, Max. I shan't get anything from the bargain but
you, and that is all I want."

"This is madness," said Riatt, trying not very sincerely to free himself.

"Yes, of course it's mad, like all really logical things," she answered.
"But that's the way it's going to be. I love you, and I am going to stay
with you."

"I couldn't let you," he said. "I couldn't accept such a sacrifice."

"A sacrifice, Max. That's the first really stupid thing I ever heard you
say. It isn't a sacrifice; it's a result, a consequence of the fact that
I love you. It isn't a question of my doing it, or your letting me. It
simply can't be otherwise. The other things I used to value--parties and
pretty clothes and luxuries--they were a sort of game I played because I
did not know any other. But only part of me was alive then. I was like a
blind person; and they were my stick; but now that I can see, the stick
is just in my way. It isn't silly and romantic to believe i