veins reticulating in the round white neck, and the pink shapes of the ear showing through the shadow.  Her hair was visible to him, its colour in the light and in the shadow; and her long thin hands, the laces she wore at the wrists, her rings, the lines of the shoulders, and of the arms, the breasts—­their size, their shape, and their very weight—­ every attitude that her body fell into naturally.  From long knowledge and intense thinking he could see her at will; and there she was at the end of the sofa crossing and uncrossing her lovely legs, so long from the knees, showing through the thin evening gown; he thought of their sweetness and the seduction of the foot advancing, showing an inch or two beyond the skirt of her dress.  And then she drew her rings from her fingers, dropping them into her lap, and unconsciously placed them again over the knuckles.

A great deal he would give—­everything—­for Ulick’s youth, so that he might charm her again.  But of what avail to begin again?  Had he not charmed her before? and had not her love flowed past him like water, leaving nothing but a memory of it; yet it was all he had—­all that life had given him.  And it was so little, because she had never loved him.  Every other quality Nature had bestowed upon her, but not the capacity for loving.  For the first time it seemed to him he had begun to understand that she was incapable of love—­in other words, of giving herself wholly to anybody.  A strange mystery it was that one who could give her body so unreservedly should be so parsimonious about her soul.  To give her body and retain herself was her gift, above all other women, thereby remaining always new, always unexpected, and always desirable.  In the few visits to Paris which had been allowed to him by her, and by Madame Savelli, she had repaid him for the long abstinences by an extraordinary exaltation and rapture of body and of intellect, but he had always experienced a strange alienation, even when he held her in his arms—­perhaps then more than ever did he feel that she never was, and never could be, his.  The thought had always been at the back of his mind:  “Tomorrow I shall be far from her, and she will be interested in other things.  All she can give me is her body—­a delicious possession it is—­and a sweet friendliness, a kindliness which sometimes seems like love, but which is not.”  Some men would regard her as a cold sensualist; maybe so, though indeed he did not think that it was so, for her kindliness precluded such a criticism.  But even if it were so, such superficial thinking about her mattered little to him who knew her as none other could ever know her, having lived with her since she was two or three and twenty till five and thirty—­thinking of her always, noting every faintest shade of difference, comparing one mood with another, learning her as other men learn a difficult text from some ancient parchment, some obscure palimpsest—­that is what she was, something written over.  There was another text which he had never been able to master; and he sat in his chair conscious of nothing but some vague pain which—­becoming more and more definite—­awoke him at last.  Though he had studied her so closely perhaps he knew as little of her as any one else, as little as she knew of herself.  Of only one thing was there any surety, and that was she could only be saved by an appeal to the senses.