om of his mind, that private chamber wherein, retired, he
assembled the parts of his puzzles; that familiar garment in which,
invested, he sat among the fraternity of his thoughts; the evenings with
Young Perch and old Mrs. Perch; the evenings with Mr. Fargus.

Most strongly of all called another refuge; and this, because it called
so strongly, he kept locked. Nona.

They met no more frequently than, prior to her two years' absence, they
had been wont to meet in the ordinary course of neighbourly life; and
their lives, by their situations, were much detached. Northrepps was
only visited, never resided at for many months together.

His resolution was not to force encounters. Once, very shortly after
that day of her disclosure, he had said to her, "Look here, we're not
going to have any arranged meetings, Nona. I'm not strong enough--not
strong enough to resist. I couldn't bear it."

She answered, "You're too strong, Marko. You're too strong to do what
you think you ought not to do; it isn't not being strong enough."

He told her she was very wrong. "That's giving me strength of character.
I haven't any strength of character at all. That's been my failing all
my life. I tell you what I've got instead. I've got the most
frightfully, the most infernally vivid sense of what's right in my own
personal conduct. Lots of people haven't. I envy them. They can do what
they like. But I know what I ought to do. I know it so absolutely that
there's no excuse for me when I don't do it, certainly no credit if I
do. I go in with my eyes open or I stay out merely because my eyes are
open. There's nothing in that. If it's anything it's contemptible."

She said, "Teach me to be contemptible."

V

In those words he had expressed his composition. What he had not
revealed--that very vividness of sense of what was right (and what was
wrong) in his conduct forbidding it--was the corroding struggle to
preserve the path of his duty. Because of that struggle he kept locked
the refuge that Nona was to him in his dismays. He would have no
meetings with her save only such as thrice happy chance and most kind
circumstance might apportion. That was within the capacity of his
strength. He could "at least" (he used to think) prevent his limbs from
taking him to her. But his mind--his mind turned to her; automatically,
when he was off his guard, as a swing door ever to its frame;
frantically, when he would abate it, as a prisoned animal against