rmanent and passing in its nature. Why should he
do that? Neale knew better than that. Then she saw why: it was because
Vincent conceived of nothing but emptiness if he let it go, and horribly
feared that imaginary emptiness. Out of the incalculable richness of her
kingdom she wondered again at his blindness. . . . And made a pitying guess
at the reason for it . . . perhaps for him it was _not_ imaginary. Perhaps
one of the terms of the bargain he had made with life was that there
_should_ be nothing later but emptiness for him. Yes, she saw that. She
would have made that bargain, too, if it had not been for Neale. She
would have been holding terrified to what was not to be held; with
nothing but that between her and the abyss. Who was she to blame Vincent
for his blindness?

That, perhaps, had been the meaning of that singular last moment of
their talk together, which had frightened her so, with its sudden plunge
below the surface, into the real depths, when, changed wholly into
someone else, he had run back to her, his hands outstretched, his eyes
frightened, his lips trembling . . . perhaps he had felt the abyss there
just before him. For an instant there, he had made her think of Paul,
made her remember that Vincent himself had, so short a time ago, been a
little boy too. She had been so shocked and racked by pity and remorse,
that she would have been capable of any folly to comfort him. Perhaps
she had seen there for an instant the man Vincent might have been, and
had seen that she could have loved that man.

But how instantly it had passed! He had not suffered that instant of
true feeling to have space to live, but had burned it up with the return
of his pride, his resentment that anyone save himself should try to
stand upright, with the return of the devouring desire-for-possession of
the man who had always possessed everything he had coveted. There was
something sad in being able to see the littleness of life which
underlay the power and might of personality in a man like Vincent. He
could have been something else.

She wondered why there should slide into her mood, just now, a faint
tinge of regret. . . . Why should there be anything there but the bright
gladness of thanksgiving for the liberation from the chains which her
own nature might have forged about her? She had at last stepped outside
the narrow circle of personal desire, and found all the world open to
her. And yet there was room in her heart for a