to dance
to."

She smiled back wistfully.

"'The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices. . .'"

"I don't hear them," he muttered clumsily.

"Caliban heard them----"

"And you're Ariel," he said, with sudden, sorrowful understanding.
"Ariel!"

From the steps of the dark house she looked down at him, her eager face
smiling palely in the white, still light.

"Ariel wasn't a woman, dear duffer. You'll have to read it. I'll lend
it to you. And then we'll go again."

He shook his head.

"No."

"Yes--often--often, Robert. We've been nearer to one another than ever
before--just these last minutes--quite, quite close. We've got to find
each other in pleasure too."

He rallied all his strength. He said stiffly, pompously:

"It's been awfully nice, of course. And thank you for taking me. But
I don't really care for that sort of thing."

And for a moment they remained facing one another whilst the joy died
out of her eyes, leaving a queer distress. Then they shook hands and
he left her, coldly, prosaically, as though nothing had happened. But
he was like a drunken man who had fallen into a sea of glory.

"The clouds, methought, would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me. . ."

There was all that work that he had meant to do before morning. It
seemed far off--more unreal and fantastic than a fairy tale. His heart
and brain, ached with willingness and loathing.

". . . that, when I wak'd,
I cried to dream again. . ."

He set his teeth. He clenched his hands till they hurt him.

"I'll have to keep away from all that," he thought aloud,
"altogether--till I don't care any more."

IV

1

After all, Rufus Cosgrave had imagined his answers. Connie Edwards met
Robert as he came out of the hospital gates and told him. It was raining
dismally, with an ill-tempered wind blustering down the crowded street,
and she had not dressed for bad weather. Perhaps she did not admit
unpleasant possibilities even into her wardrobe. Perhaps she could not
afford to do so. Her thin, paper-soled shoes, with the Louis XIV heels,
and the cheap silk stockings which showed up to her knees, made her look
like some bedraggled, long-legged bird-of-Paradise. A gaudy parasol
could not protect her flopping hat, or her complexion, which had both
suffered. Or she