“I wrote her a long letter that night, and waited two days for a reply.  
“On the third day I had a brief line saying that she was going to spend Sunday with some friends who had a place near Riverdale, and that she would arrange to see me while she was there. That was all.
 
“It was on a Saturday that I received the note and I came out here the same night. The next morning was rainy, and I was in despair, for I had counted on her asking me to take her for a drive or a long walk. It was hopeless to try to say what I had to say to her in the drawing-room of a crowded country-house. And only eleven days were left!
 
“I stayed indoors all the morning, fearing to go out lest she should telephone me. But no sign came, and I grew more and more restless and anxious. She was too free and frank for coquetry, but her silence and evasiveness made me feel that, for some reason, she did not wish to hear what she knew I meant to say. Could it be that she was, after all, more conventional, less genuine, than I had thought? I went again and again over the whole maddening round of ; but the only conclusion I could rest in was that, if she loved me as I loved her, she would be as as I was to let no obstacle come between us during the days that were left.
 
“The luncheon-hour came and passed, and there was no word from her. I had ordered my trap to be ready, so that I might drive over as soon as she summoned me; but the hours dragged on, the early came, and I sat here in this very chair, or measured up and down, up and down, the length of this very rug—and still there was no message and no letter.
 
“It had grown quite dark, and I had ordered away, impatiently, the servant who came in with the lamps: I couldn’t bear any definite sign that the day was over! And I was there on the rug, staring at the door, and noticing a bad crack in its panel, when I heard the sound of wheels on the . A word at last, no doubt—a line to explain.... I didn’t seem to care much for her reasons, and I stood where I was and continued to stare at the door. And suddenly it opened and she came in.
 
“The servant followed her with a light, and then went out and closed the door. Her face looked pale in the lamplight, but her voice was as clear as a bell.
 
“‘Well,’ she said, ‘you see I’ve come.’
 
“I started toward her with hands outstretched. ‘You’ve come—you’ve come!’ I .
 
“Yes; it was like her to come in that way—without or explanation or excuse. It was like her, if she gave at all, to give not or in haste, but openly, , without the measure or counting the cost. But her quietness and disconcerted me. She did not look like a woman who has yielded impetuously to an uncontrollable impulse. There was something almost solemn in her face.
 
“The effect of it stole over me as I looked at her, suddenly the huge flush of gratified .
 
“‘You’re here, here, here!’ I kept repeating, like a child singing over a happy word.
 
“‘You said,’ she continued, in her grave clear voice, ‘that we couldn’t go on as we were—’
 
“‘Ah, it’s divine of you!’ I held out my arms to her.
 
“She didn’t draw back from them, but her faint smile said, ‘Wait,’ and lifting her hands she took the pins from her hat, and laid the hat on the table.
 
“As I saw her dear head bare in the lamp-light, with the thick hair waving away from the parting, I forgot everything but the and wonder of her being here—here, in my house, on my hearth—that fourth rose from the corner of the rug is the exact spot where she was standing....
 
“I drew her to the fire, and made her sit down in the chair you’re in, and knelt down by her, and hid my face on her knees. She put her hand on my head, and I was happy to the depths of my soul.
 
“‘Oh, I forgot—’ she exclaimed suddenly. I lifted my head and our eyes met. Hers were smiling.
 
“She reached out her hand, opened the little bag she had tossed down with her hat, and drew a small object from it. ‘I left my trunk at the station. Here’s the check. Can you send for it?’ she asked.
 
“Her trunk—she wanted me to send for her trunk! Oh, yes—I see your smile, your ‘lucky man!’ Only, you see, I didn’t love her in that way. I knew she couldn’t come to my house without running a big risk of discovery, and my tenderness for her, my impulse to shield her, was stronger, even then, than vanity or desire. Judged from the point of view of those emotions I fell terribly short of my part. I hadn’t any of the proper feelings. Such an act of romantic was so unlike her that it almost irritated me, and I found myself wondering how I could get her to reconsider her plan without—well, without seeming to want her to.
 
“It’s not the way a novel hero feels; it’s probably not the way a man in real life ought to have felt. But it’s the way I felt—and she saw it.
 
“She put her hands on my shoulders and looked at me with deep, deep eyes. ‘Then you didn’t expect me to stay?’ she asked.
 
“I caught her hands and pressed them to me, out that I hadn’t dared to dream....
 
“‘You thought I’d come—just for an hour?’
 
“‘How could I dare think more? I adore you, you know, for what you’ve done! But it would be known if you—if you stayed on. My servants—everybody about here knows you. I’ve no right to expose you to the risk.’ She made no answer, and I went on tenderly: ‘Give me, if you will, the next few hours: there’s a train that will get you to town by midnight. And then we’ll arrange something—in town—where it’s safer for you—more easily managed.... It’s beautiful, it’s heavenly of you to have come; but I love you too much—I must take care of you and think for you—’
 
“I don’t suppose it ever took me so long to say so few words, and though they were profoundly sincere they sounded unutterably shallow, and . She made no effort to help me out, but sat silent, listening, with her smile. ‘It’s my duty, dearest, as a man,’ I on. The more I love you the more I’m bound—’
 
“‘Yes; but you don’t understand,’ she interrupted.
 
“She rose as she , and I got up also, and we stood and looked at each other.
 
“‘I haven’t come for a night; if you want me I’ve come for always,’ she said.
 
“Here again, if I give you an honest account of my feelings I shall write myself down as the poor-spirited creature I suppose I am. There wasn’t, I swear, at the moment, a grain of selfishness, of personal , in my feeling. I worshipped every hair of her head—when we were together I was happy, when I was away from her something was gone from every good thing; but I had always looked on our love for each other, our possible relation to each other, as such situations are looked on in what is called society. I had supposed her, for all her freedom and , to be just as tacitly to that view as I was: ready to take what she wanted on the terms on which society concedes such taking, and to pay for it by the usual , concealments and . In short, I supposed that she would ‘play the game’—look out for her own safety, and expect me to look out for it. It sounds cheap enough, put that way—but it’s the rule we live under, all of us. And the of finding her suddenly outside of it, of it, unconscious of it, left me, for an awful minute, stammering at her like a graceless .... Perhaps it wasn’t even a minute; but in it she had gone the whole round of my thoughts.
 
“‘It’s raining,’ she said, very low. ‘I suppose you can telephone for a trap?’
 
“There was no or in her voice. She walked slowly across the room and paused before the Brangwyn etching over there. ‘That’s a good impression. Will you telephone, please?’ she repeated.
 
“I found my voice again, and with it the power of movement. I followed her and dropped at her feet. ‘You can’t go like this!’ I cried.
 
“She looked down on me from heights and heights. ‘I can’t stay like this,’ she answered.
 
“I stood up and we faced each other like . ‘You don’t know,’ I accused her , ‘in the least what you’re asking me to ask of you!’
 
“‘Yes, I do: everything,’ she breathed.
 
“‘And it’s got to be that or nothing?’
 
“‘Oh, on both sides,’ she reminded me.
 
“‘Not on both sides. It’s not fair. That’s why—’
 
“‘Why you won’t?’
 
“‘Why I cannot—may not!’
 
“‘Why you’ll take a night and not a life?’
 
“The , for a woman usually so sure of her aim, fell so short of the mark that its only effect was to increase my conviction of her helplessness. The very of my longing for her made me tremble where she was fearless. I had to protect her first, and think of my own attitude .
 
“She was too discerning not to see this too. Her face , grew inexpressibly appealing, and she dropped again into that chair you’re in, leaned forward, and looked up with her grave smile.
 
“‘You think I’m beside myself—raving? (You’re not thinking of yourself, I know.) I’m not: I never was . Since I’ve known you I’ve often thought this might happen. This thing between us isn’t an ordinary thing. If it had been we shouldn’t, all these months, have drifted. We should have wanted to skip to the last page—and then throw down the book. We shouldn’t have felt we could trust the future as we did. We were in no hurry because we knew we shouldn’t get tired; and when two people feel that about each other they must live together—or part. I don’t see what else they can do. A little trip along the coast won’t answer. It’s the high seas—or else being tied up to Lethe . And I’m for the high seas, my dear!’
 
“Think of sitting here—here, in this room, in this chair—and listening to that, and seeing the tight on her hair, and hearing the sound of her voice! I don’t suppose there ever was a scene just like it....
 
“She was astounding—inexhaustible; through all my of resistance I found a kind of fierce joy in following her. It was at white heat: the last of passion. She might have been an angel arguing a point in the empyrean if she hadn’t been, so completely, a woman pleading for her life....
 
“Her life: that was the thing at stake! She couldn’t do with less of it than she was capable of; and a woman’s life is inextricably part of the man’s she cares for.
 
“That was why, she argued, she couldn’t accept the usual solution: couldn’t enter into the only relation that society tolerates between people like ourselves. Yes: she knew all the arguments on that side: didn’t I suppose she’d been over them and over them? She knew (for hadn’t she often said it of others?) what is said of the woman who, by throwing in her lot with her lover’s, him to a lifelong duty which has the irksomeness without the dignity of marriage. Oh, she could talk on that side with the best of them: only she asked me to consider the other—the side of the man and woman who love each other deeply and completely enough to want their lives enlarged, and not diminished, by their love. What, in such a case—she reasoned—must be the effect of , denying, disowning, the central fact, the power of one’s existence? She asked me to picture the course of such a love: first working as a fever in the blood, distorting and everything, making all other interests , all other duties irksome, and then, as the acknowledged claims of life their hold, gradually dying—the poor starved passion!—for want of the necessary food of common living and doing, yet leaving life by the loss of all it might have been.
 
“‘I’m not talking, dear—’ I see her now, leaning toward me with shining eyes: ‘I’m not talking of the people who haven’t enough to fill their days, and to whom a little mystery, a little manoeuvring, gives an illusion of importance that they can’t afford to miss; I’m talking of you and me, with all our tastes and curiosities and activities; and I ask you what our love would become............