Sylvia gave, and alone could give him.  That was the tragedy—­it was all sunk and rooted in the very nature of a man.  Since the girl had come into their lives he was no more unfaithful to his wife in thought than he had been before.  If only she could look into him, see him exactly as he was, as, without part or lot in the process, he had been made—­then she would understand, and even might not suffer; but she could not, and he could never make it plain.  And solemnly, desperately, with a weary feeling of the futility of words, he went on trying:  Could she not see?  It was all a thing outside him—­a craving, a chase after beauty and life, after his own youth!  At that word she looked at him: 

“And do you think I don’t want my youth back?”

He stopped.

For a woman to feel that her beauty—­the brightness of her hair and eyes, the grace and suppleness of her limbs—­were slipping from her and from the man she loved!  Was there anything more bitter?—­or any more sacred duty than not to add to that bitterness, not to push her with suffering into old age, but to help keep the star of her faith in her charm intact!

Man and woman—­they both wanted youth again; she, that she might give it all to him; he, because it would help him towards something—­new!  Just that world of difference!

He got up, and said: 

“Come, dear, let’s try and sleep.”

He had not once said that he could give it up.  The words would not pass his lips, though he knew she must be conscious that he had not said them, must be longing to hear them.  All he had been able to say was: 

“So long as you want me, you shall never lose me” . . . and, “I will never keep anything from you again.”

Up in their room she lay hour after hour in his arms, quite unresentful, but without life in her, and with eyes that, when his lips touched them, were always wet.

What a maze was a man’s heart, wherein he must lose himself every minute!  What involved and intricate turnings and turnings on itself; what fugitive replacement of emotion by emotion!  What strife between pities and passions; what longing for peace! . . .

And in his feverish exhaustion, which was almost sleep, Lennan hardly knew whether it was the thrum of music or Sylvia’s moaning that he heard; her body or Nell’s within his arms. . . .

But life had to be lived, a face preserved against the world, engagements kept.  And the nightmare went on for both of them, under the calm surface of an ordinary Sunday.  They were like people walking at the edge of a high cliff, not knowing from step to step whether they would fall; or like swimmers struggling for issue out of a dark whirlpool.

In the afternoon they went together to a concert; it was just something to do—­something that saved them for an hour or two from the possibility of speaking on the one subject left to them.  The ship had gone down, and they were clutching at anything that for a moment would help to keep them above water.