that day I went through the office and saw you
what you were. You don't understand, I tell you. I'm sorry for what I
did to-day because it offended you--but you drove me to it. Most of the
time you seem cold, you're like an iceberg, you make me think you hate
me, and then all of a sudden you'll be kind, as you were the other
night, as you seemed this afternoon--you make me think I've got a
chance, and then, when you came near me, when you touched my hand--why,
I didn't know what I was doing. I just had to have you. A man like me
can't stand it."

"Then I'd better go away," she said. "I ought to have gone long ago."

"Why?" he cried. "Why? What's your reason? Why do you want to ruin my
life? You've--you've woven yourself into it--you're a part of it. I
never knew what it was to care for a woman before, I tell you. There's
that mill," he repeated, naively. "I've made it the best mill in the
country, I've got the biggest order that ever came to any mill--if you
went away I wouldn't care a continental about it. If you went away I
wouldn't have any ambition left. Because you're a part of it, don't you
see? You--you sort of stand for it now, in my mind. I'm not literary,
I can't express what I'd like to say, but sometimes I used to think of
that mill as a woman--and now you've come along--" Ditmar stopped, for
lack of adequate eloquence.

She smiled in the darkness at his boyish fervour,--one of the aspects of
the successful Ditmar, the Ditmar of great affairs, that appealed to her
most strongly. She was softened, touched; she felt, too, a responsive
thrill to such a desire as his. Yet she did not reply. She could not.
She was learning that emotion is never simple. And some inhibition, the
identity of which was temporarily obscured still persisted, pervading
her consciousness....

They were crossing the bridge at Stanley Street, now deserted, and by
common consent they paused in the middle of it, leaning on the rail. The
hideous chocolate factory on the point was concealed by the night,--only
the lights were there, trembling on the surface of the river. Against
the flushed sky above the city were silhouetted the high chimneys of the
power plant. Ditmar's shoulder touched hers. He was still pleading, but
she seemed rather to be listening to the symphony of the unseen waters
falling over the dam. His words were like that, suggestive of a torrent
into which she longed to fling herself, yet refrained, without knowing
why. Her