‘Well,’ he exclaimed, ‘how’s everybody?  And where are the girls?’

She gave the news, and then they walked together to the seat and sat down, in silence.

‘You don’t look too well,’ she ventured.  ‘You’ve been working too hard.’

He passed his hand across his forehead and moved on the seat so as to meet her eyes directly.

‘Quite the reverse,’ he said.  ‘I haven’t been working half hard enough.’

‘Not half hard enough?’ she repeated mechanically.

As his eyes caught hers and held them she was conscious of an exquisite but mortal tremor; her spine seemed to give way.  The old desire for youth and love, for that brilliant and tender existence in which were united virtue and the flavour of sin, dalliance and high endeavour, eternal appetite and eternal satisfaction, rushed wondrously over her.  The life which she had mapped out for herself suddenly appeared miserable, inadequate, even contemptible.  Was she, with her rich blood, her perfect health, her proud carriage, her indestructible beauty, and her passionate soul, to wither solitary in the cold shadow?  She felt intensely, as every human heart feels sometimes, that the satisfactions of duty were chimerical, and that the only authentic bliss was to be found in a wild and utter abandonment to instinct.  No matter what the cost of rapture, in self-respect or in remorse, it was worth the cost.  Why did not mankind rise up and put an end to this endless crucifixion of instinct which saddened the whole earth, and say gloriously, ’Let us live’?  And in a moment dalliance without endeavour, and the flavour of sin without virtue, were beautiful ideals for her.  She could have put her arms round Arthur’s neck and drawn him to her, and blotted out all the past and sullied all the future with one kiss.  She wondered what recondite force dissuaded her from doing so.  ’I have but to lift my arms and smile,’ she thought.

‘You’ve been very cruel,’ said Arthur.  ’I wouldn’t have believed you could have been so cruel.  I guess you didn’t know how cruel you were.  Why didn’t you write before?’

‘I couldn’t,’ she answered submissively.  ‘Didn’t you understand?’ The question was not quite ingenuous, but she meant it well.

‘I understood at first,’ he said.  ’I knew you would want to wait.  I knew how upset you’d be—­I—­I think I knew all you’d feel....  But it will soon be eighteen months ago.’  His voice was full of emotion.  Then he smiled, gravely and charmingly.’  However, it’s finished now, and I’m here.’

His indictment was very kind, very mild; but she could see how he had suffered, and that his wrath against her had been none the less genuine because it was the wrath of love.  She grew more and more humble before his gaze so adoring and so reproachful.  She knew that she had been selfish, and that she had ransomed her conscience as much at his expense as at her own.  She perceived the vital inferiority