“...  You’ve got that sort of face.  When I saw you the first time—­Do you remember?  You came towards me over the field.  You stopped and spoke to me.”

“Supposing I hadn’t?”

“It wouldn’t have mattered.  I’d have followed you just the same.  Wherever you’d gone I’d have gone, too.  I very nearly turned back then.”

She remembered.  She saw him standing in the road at the turn.

“I knew I had to see you again.  But I waited two days to make sure.  Then I came ...

“...  And when I’d gone I kept on seeing your face.  It made me come back again.  And the other day—­I tried to get away from you.  I didn’t mean to come back; but I had to.  I can’t stand being away from you.  And yet—­

“...  Oh well—­there it is.  I had to tell you ...  I couldn’t if I didn’t trust you.”

“You tried to get away from me—­You didn’t mean to come back.”

“I tell you I had to.  It’s no use trying.”

“But you didn’t want to come back.... That’s why I dreamed about you.”

“Did you dream about me?”

“Yes.  Furiously.  Three nights running.  I dreamed you’d got away and when I’d found you a black thing came down and cut you off.  I dreamed you’d got away again, and I met you in a foreign village with a lot of foreign women, and you looked at me and I knew you hated me.  You wouldn’t know me.  You went by without speaking and left me there.”

“My God—­you thought I could do that?”

“I dreamed it.  You don’t think in dreams.  You feel.  You see things.”

“You see things that don’t exist, that never can exist, things you’ve thought about people.  If I thought that about myself, Jeanne, I’d blow my brains out now, so that it shouldn’t happen.”

“That wasn’t the worst dream.  The third was the worst.  You were in a dreadful, dangerous place.  Something awful was happening, and you wanted me, and I couldn’t get to you.”

“No, that wasn’t the worst dream.  I did want you, and you knew it.”

She thought:  “He cares.  He doesn’t want to care, but he does.  And he trusts me.  I shall have to tell him ...”

“There’s something,” she said, “I’ve got to tell you.”

* * * * *

He must have known.  He must have guessed.

He had listened with a gentle, mute attention, as you listen to a story about something that you remember, that interests you still, his eyes fixed on his own hands, his clear, beautiful face dreamy and inert.

“You see,” he said, “you did trust me.  You wouldn’t tell me all that if you didn’t.”

“Of course I trust you.  I told you because you trusted me.  I thought—­I thought you ought to know.  I daresay you did know—­all the time.”

“No.  No, I didn’t.  I shouldn’t have believed it was in you.”

“It isn’t in me now.  It’s gone clean out of me.  I shall never want that sort of thing again.”