“Even now!  Why should I give up that much of you that is mine?  If she could take it—­But she cannot take it.  If I let you go—­you will do nothing.  All this ambition, all these interests will dwindle and die, and she will not mind.  She will not understand.  She will think that she still has you.  Why should she covet what she cannot possess?  Why should she be given the thing that is mine—­to throw aside?”

She did not look at Lewisham, but before her, her face a white misery.

“In a way—­I had come to think of you as something, belonging to me ...  I shall—­still.”

“There is one thing,” said Lewisham after a pause, “it is a thing that has come to me once or twice lately Don’t you think that perhaps you over-estimate the things I might have done?  I know we’ve talked of great things to do.  But I’ve been struggling for half a year and more to get the sort of living almost anyone seems able to get.  It has taken me all my time.  One can’t help thinking after that, perhaps the world is a stiffer sort of affair ...”

“No,” she said decisively.  “You could have done great things.

“Even now,” she said, “you may do great things—­If only I might see you sometimes, write to you sometimes—­You are so capable and—­weak.  You must have somebody—­That is your weakness.  You fail in your belief.  You must have support and belief—­unstinted support and belief.  Why could I not be that to you?  It is all I want to be.  At least—­all I want to be now.  Why need she know?  It robs her of nothing.  I want nothing—­she has.  But I know of my own strength too I can do nothing.  I know that with you ...  It is only knowing hurts her.  Why should she know?”

Mr. Lewisham looked at her doubtfully.  That phantom greatness of his, it was that lit her eyes.  In that instant, at least he had no doubts of the possibility of his Career.  But he knew that in some way the secret of his greatness and this admiration went together.  Conceivably they were one and indivisible.  Why indeed need Ethel know?  His imagination ran over the things that might be done, the things that might happen, and touched swiftly upon complication, confusion, discovery.

“The thing is, I must simplify my life.  I shall do nothing unless I simplify my life.  Only people who are well off can be—­complex.  It is one thing or the other—­”

He hesitated and suddenly had a vision of Ethel weeping as once he had seen her weep with the light on the tears in her eyes.

“No,” he said almost brutally.  “No.  It’s like this—­I can’t do anything underhand.  I mean—­I’m not so amazingly honest—­now.  But I’ve not that sort of mind.  She would find me out.  It would do no good and she would find me out.  My life’s too complex.  I can’t manage it and go straight.  I—­you’ve overrated me.  And besides—­Things have happened.  Something—­” He hesitated and then snatched at his resolve, “I’ve got to simplify—­and that’s the plain fact of the case.  I’m sorry, but it is so.”