or otherwise to deny his right to know, but
she seemed to have no words for it, continuing to look at him silently,
intently, with no hostility, with a sort of steady, wondering attention
in her face, usually so sensitively changing. He felt a resentment at
its quiet, at its lack of that instant responsiveness to his look which
had given him such moments of exquisite pleasure, which had been her
own, her wonderful gift to him. She was looking at him now as she might
have looked at any one else, merely in order to see what was there.

Well, he would show her what was there! The will to conquer rose high
and strong in him, with an element of fierceness it had not had before
because no resistance had called it out. He did not show this, indeed
only allowed it the smallest corner of his consciousness, keeping all
the rest tautly on the alert for the first indication of an opening, for
the first hint of where to throw his strength.

But standing in suspense on the alert was the last role he could long
endure, and in a moment, when she did not answer, he took a step towards
her, towering above her, his hands on her shoulders, pouring out with a
hot sense of release all his longing into the cry, "Marise, Marise my
own, what has happened to you?"

How he hated the quiet of her face! With what hungry impatience he
watched to see it break. How surely he counted on its disappearance at
his touch. For he had the certainty of his power to kindle her left
intact from the last time he had seen her, tinder to his spark,
helplessly played upon by his voice.

But now it was as though he had held a torch aloft into the green
branches of a living tree. A twitch of surface agitation on her face and
that was all.

And when she spoke, as she did at once, the sound of her voice was
strange and alien to him. With an extreme directness, and with a deep
sincerity of accent which, even to his ears, made his own impassioned
outcry to her sound inflated and false, she said earnestly, "I don't
believe I can tell you what has happened. I don't believe you could
understand it."

He did not believe a word of this, but with his brilliant suppleness of
mind he perceived that he was in the wrong key. She was not, for the
moment, to be kindled to flame, she who miraculously was never the same.
Perhaps it was the moment for a thrust of sheer power, straight at the
obstacle, for of course he knew the obstacle.

"I know what has happened," he said, "wi