to sleep. But when she entered her little
sitting-room she found Franklin there waiting for her. He had been
reading the newspapers before the fire and had risen quickly on hearing
her step. It was as if she had forgotten Franklin all this time.

She stood by the door that she had closed, and gazed at him. It was
without will, or hope, or feeling that she gazed, as if he were a part
only of that alien world she had looked at, and this outward seeing was
relentless. A meagre, commonplace, almost comic little man. She saw
behind him his trite and colourless antecedents; she saw before him--and
her--the future, trite and colourless too, but for the extraneous
glitter of the millions that surrounded him as incongruously as a halo
would have done. He was an angel, of course; he was good; but he was
only that; there were no varieties, no graces, no mysteries. His very
interests were as meagre as his personality; he had hardly a taste,
except the taste for doing his best. Books, music, pictures--all the
great world of beauty and intellect that the world of goodness and
workaday virtues existed, perhaps, only to make possible--its finer,
more ethereal superstructure--only counted for Franklin as recreations,
relaxations, things half humorously accepted as one accepts a glass of
lemonade on a hot day. Not only was he without charm, but he was unaware
of charm; he didn't see it or feel it or need it. And she, who had seen
and felt, she who had known Gerald and Helen, must be satisfied with
this. It was this that she must strive to be worthy of. She was
unworthy, and she knew it; but that acceptation was only part of the
horror of defeat. And the soulless gaze with which she looked at him
oddly chiselled her pallid face. She was like a dumb, classic mask, too
impersonal for tragedy. Her lips were parted in their speechlessness and
her eyes vacant of thought.

Then, after that soulless seeing, she realised that she had frightened
Franklin. He came to her. 'Dear--what is the matter?' he asked.

He came so near that she looked into his eyes. She looked deeply, for a
long time, in silence. And while she looked, while Franklin's hands
gently found and held hers, life came to her with dreadful pain again.
She felt, rather than knew--and with a long shudder--that the world was
vast; she felt and feared it as vast and alien. She felt that she was
alone, and the loneliness was a terror, beating upon her. And she
felt--no longer seeing an