degree of love, any devotion, any generous
renunciation. Clear-sighted, master of himself, he saw love before him,
and knew it when he saw it; recognised it, was ready for it, offered it,
emboldened by her soft hands so eloquent in his.

And in his arms he held it for an instant, he thought, spite of the
sudden inertia, spite of the according of cold lips and hands still
colder, relaxed, inert; held it until he doubted. That was all; he had
been wise to doubt such sudden miracles as that. She, consummate and
charming, had soon set him right. And, after all, she liked him; and
she had been sure enough of herself to permit the impulse of a moment
to carry her with him--a little way, a very little way--merely to the
formal symbol of a passion the germ of which she recognised in him.

Then she had become intelligent again, with a little laughter, a little
malice, a becoming tint of hesitation and confusion; all the sense, all
the arts, all the friendly sweetness of a woman thorough in training,
schooled in self-possession, clear enough to be audacious and perverse
without danger to herself, to the man, or to the main chance.

Standing there alone in his lighted room, he wondered whether, had her
trained and inbred policy been less precise, less worldly, she might
have responded to such a man as he. Perfectly conscious that he had been
capable of loving her; aware, too, that his experience had left him on
that borderland only through his cool refusal to cross it and face a
hopeless battle already lost, he leisurely and mentally took the measure
of his own state of mind, and found all well, all intact; found himself
still master of his affections, and probably clear-minded enough to
remain so under the circumstances.

To such a man as he, impulse to love, capacity to love, did not mean
instant capsizing with a flop into sentimental tempests, where swamped,
ardent and callow youth raises a hysterically selfish clamour for
reciprocity or death. His nature partly, partly his character, accounted
for this balance; and, in part, a rather wide experience with women of
various degrees counted more.

So, by instinct and experience, normally temperate, only what
was abnormal and inherited might work a mischief in this man. His
listlessness, his easy acquiescence, were but consequent upon the
self-knowledge of self-control. But mastery of the master-vice required
something different; he was sick of a sickness; and because, in this