ow her gladness, to see her quick smile of confidence
because he was confident! How could he have feared and doubted? He
could not let her draw away: his arms must have her.

"I'm never going to be afraid again," he said. "I know what was wrong
now."

"Well?"

"I didn't care about anything. I didn't know what I wanted, while
everything lay in front of me. I didn't feel, though I had all the
world to feel about. I didn't love, though I had all the world to
love. I just drifted. Now I have what I want."

She was silent. Across the tumult of his soul stole things of the
senses, the pulsing of her blood, the scent of that brown witchery of
hair, the touch of her tired hand, the vision of a glistening bow of
silk on a poised foot: above all, the divine sense of his own grasping
possession, her clinging weakness.

"I know now what I want," he went on rapidly. "I want the same thing
to go on that has just begun, the thing that has brushed all the
hardness and ugliness out of the world and made the future easy.
You've done all that. I want you."

He crushed her to him roughly, almost hurting her: and he knew by her
stillness that it pleased her so to be hurt.

"You're not going back now," he whispered fiercely. "You're not going
to knock to pieces the thing you've built. India is a cool heaven now;
don't make it a fiery hell. Work is all doing and creating. Don't
make it all drudgery. Oh, I'm selfish. You're so perfect, and I can
only talk of my own work, my own troubles. Freda, I'm sorry. I----"

Still she was silent.

"Oh, say something," he begged. "Forgive me for being selfish."

"There's nothing to forgive."

"Then say--you've said you cared for me--say you love me."

In a moment he had forgotten his remorse and again was claiming,
insisting. And she, knowing that love can be, even must be, selfish
and imperious, was glad that he should claim her and obeyed his command.

Of course Martin stayed in London over Christmas and into the New Year,
living with a fullness he had never known, seeing the purpose and
fineness of things which he had despised and neglected. How strange it
was that all the world should be changed by that one weak figure,
seemingly so ineffectual! how strange that one mortal should carry for
another the keys of heaven! How trivial seemed all his philosophy with
its objectivity of this and that when he discovered how subjective all
his outlook was, how the presence o