d she feel? And in the presence of her perfect stillness, in the
breathless silence, he felt himself insignificant and powerless before
her, like a prisoner in chains. The fury of his impotence called out
sinister images, that faculty of tormenting vision, which in a moment
of anguishing sense of wrong induces a man to mutter threats or make
a menacing gesture in the solitude of an empty room. But the gust of
passion passed at once, left him trembling a little, with the wondering,
reflective fear of a man who has paused on the very verge of suicide.
The serenity of truth and the peace of death can be only secured through
a largeness of contempt embracing all the profitable servitudes of life.
He found he did not want to know. Better not. It was all over. It was
as if it hadn't been. And it was very necessary for both of them, it was
morally right, that nobody should know.

He spoke suddenly, as if concluding a discussion.

"The best thing for us is to forget all this."

She started a little and shut the fan with a click.

"Yes, forgive--and forget," he repeated, as if to himself.

"I'll never forget," she said in a vibrating voice. "And I'll never
forgive myself. . . ."

"But I, who have nothing to reproach myself . . ." He began, making a
step towards her. She jumped up.

"I did not come back for your forgiveness," she exclaimed, passionately,
as if clamouring against an unjust aspersion.

He only said "oh!" and became silent. He could not understand this
unprovoked aggressiveness of her attitude, and certainly was very
far from thinking that an unpremeditated hint of something resembling
emotion in the tone of his last words had caused that uncontrollable
burst of sincerity. It completed his bewilderment, but he was not at
all angry now. He was as if benumbed by the fascination of the
incomprehensible. She stood before him, tall and indistinct, like a
black phantom in the red twilight. At last poignantly uncertain as to
what would happen if he opened his lips, he muttered:

"But if my love is strong enough . . ." and hesitated.

He heard something snap loudly in the fiery stillness. She had broken
her fan. Two thin pieces of ivory fell, one after another, without a
sound, on the thick carpet, and instinctively he stooped to pick them
up. While he groped at her feet it occurred to him that the woman there
had in her hands an indispensable gift which nothing else on earth could
give; and when he stood up he w