e flaring
streets and joined the joyous welter of confusion at Piccadilly. "The
man's got no sense of humour and he thinks that everyone is miserable
who hasn't got two hundred a year. The poor are just as happy as the
rich. Of course they oughtn't to be, but they are."

"But there was a point," said Freda, "about unity of interest. It may
be obvious, but it's true. Didn't you drift? Haven't I drifted?"

They turned into a restaurant.

As they supped they forgot about the play. But later Martin's mind
returned to the subject.

"Come back," said Freda suddenly. "Penny."

"Hand over," he answered, smiling as he started.

"Well, what is it?"

"You, of course."

"I'm sorry for that. You looked so sad."

"I'm feeling ashamed," he confessed.

"What of?"

"Of the way I've thought of you. I've been so selfish. I only cared
for my own escape from drifting. It's been my work, my life, my love.
I have been thinking of you as the person who would make my life
perfect. It's been all me, me, me. When we first met I thought of you
and your work. Now it's only me and my work."

"That's as it should be."

"No, no, it isn't. A year ago I should have hated myself for thinking
like this."

"Perhaps you have learned as well as lived."

"I've been a brute and there's an end of it." He was deriving a secret
pleasure from his self-depreciation. There was bliss in humiliating
himself before her, in grovelling at the feet of her whom he adored.
If he could not get the conventional thrill from the confession of past
affairs and failings, he would achieve the ecstasy of self-torture by
laying bare a loftier mistake.

But she laughed at him. "Silly Billy," she said. "Pay the waiter and
I'll tell you."

She told him as they drove back together in their taxi.

"After all," she began, "compare my work with yours. Mine is drudgery.
Yours is big and important. It doesn't matter what becomes of mine,
but it matters a lot what becomes of yours, I hate mine and I love
yours. I want to give myself up to yours, to make it easier and
better. Can't you see, Martin dear, that isn't selfishness or
unselfishness. Those words don't count in such a case. If we love,
then I'm you and you're me, and one person can't give to himself or
take away from himself surely."

"It sounds so specious," he said. "And yet I still feel greedy, as
though I were denying your right to be yourself."

"I don't want to be myself. I