Dion had become very pale.  He stood for a moment without speaking, clenching his hands and looking at her with blazing eyes.  For a moment she thought that perhaps he was going to strike her.  He seemed to be struggling desperately with himself, to be striving to conquer something within him.  At last he turned away from her.  She heard him twice mutter the name of her boy, “Jimmy!  Jimmy!” Then he went away from her to the far end of the room, where the piano was, and stood by it.  She saw his broad shoulders heaving.  He held on to the edge of the piano with both hands, leaning forward.  She stayed where she was, staring at him.  She realized that to-night he might be dangerous to her.  She had set out to defy him.  But she was not sure now whether, perhaps, gentleness and an air of great sincerity might not be the only effective weapons against him in his present abnormal condition.  Possibly even now it was not too late to use them.  She crossed the room and came to him swiftly.

“Dion!” she said.

He did not move.

“Dion!” she repeated, putting her hand on his shoulder.

He turned round.  His pale face was distorted.  She scarcely recognized him.

“Dion, let us look things in the face.”

“Oh, God—­that is what I’m doing,” he said.

His lips twisted, his face was convulsed.  She looked at him in silence, wondering what was going to happen.  For a moment she was almost physically afraid.  Something in him to-night struck hard upon her imagination and she felt as if it were trembling.

“Come and sit down,” he said, at last.

And she saw that for the moment he had succeeded in regaining self-control.

“Very well.”

She went to sit down; he sat opposite her.

“You hate me, don’t you?” he said.

She hesitated.

“Don’t you?” he repeated.

“We needn’t use ugly words,” she said at last.

“For ugly things?  I believe it’s best.  You hate me and I hate you.  D’you know why I hate you?  Not because you deliberately made me care for you with my body, in the beastly, wholly physical way, but because you wouldn’t let the other thing alone.”

“The other thing?”

“Haven’t we got something else as well as the body?  Look here—­before I ever knew you I was always trying to build.  At first I tried to build for a possible future which might never come.  Well, it did come, and I was glad I’d stuck to my building—­sometimes when it was difficult.  Then I tried to build for—­for my wife—­and then my child came and I tried to build for him, too.  So it went on.  I was always building, or trying to.  In South Africa I was doing it, and I came back feeling as if I’d got something to show, not much, but something, for my work.  Then the crash came, and I thought I knew sorrow and horror down to the bones.  But I didn’t.  I’ve only got to know them to the bones here.  You’ve