I fell on my knees beside her.

“Not play, Judith—­”

She put out her hand to check me, and the words died on my lips.  What could I say?

“For you it was a detached pleasant sentiment, if you like; for me the deadliest earnest.  I was a fool too.  You never said you loved me, but I thought you did.  You were not as other men, you knew nothing of the ways of the world or of women or of passion —­you were reserved, intellectual—­you viewed things in a queer light of your own.  I felt that the touch of a chain would fret you.  I gave you absolute freedom—­often when I craved for you.  I made no demands.  I assented to your philosophic analysis of the situation—­it is your way to moralise whimsically on everything, as if you were a disconnected intelligence outside the universe —­and I paid no attention to it.  I used to laugh at you—­oh, not unkindly, but lovingly, happily, victoriously.  Oh, yes, I was a fool—­what woman in love isn’t?  I thought I gave you all you needed.  I was content, secure.  I magnified every little demonstration.  When you touched my ear it was more to me than the embrace of another man might have been.  I have lived on one kiss of yours for a week.  To you the kiss was of no more value than a cigarette.  I wish,” she added in a whisper, “I wish I were dead!”

She had spoken in a low, monotonous voice, staring haggardly at the fire, while I knelt by her side.  I murmured some banal apologia, miserably aware that one set of words is as futile as another when one has broken a woman’s heart.

“You never knew I loved you?” she went on in the same bitter undertone.  “What kind of woman did you take me for?  I have accepted help from you to enable me to live in this flat—­do you imagine I could have done such a thing without loving you?  I should have thought it was obvious in a thousand ways.”

The fire getting low, she took up the scoop for coals.  Mechanically I relieved her of the thing and fulfilled the familiar task.  Neither spoke for a long time.  She remained there and I went to the window.  It had begun to rain.  A barrel-organ below was playing some horrible music-hall air, and every vibrant note was like a hammer on one’s nerves.  The grinder’s bedraggled Italian wife perceiving me at the window grinned up at me with the national curve of the palm.  She had a black eye which the cacophonous fiend had probably given her, and she grinned like a happy child of nature.  Men in my position do not blacken women’s eyes; but it is only a question of manners.  Was I, for that, less of a brute male than the scowling beast at the organ?

The sudden sound of a sob made me turn to Judith, who had broken down and was crying bitterly, her face hidden in her hands.  I bent and touched her shoulder.

“Judith—­”

She flung her arms around my neck.

“I can’t give you up, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” she cried, wildly.