“But you mustn’t stay, not a second.  We must go downstairs.”

“Yes.”

“Will you be good?”

“R-reasonably!” He was pale, large-eyed, serious.

“You’ve got to be more than reasonably good!” She felt sensible and superior; she was energetic about pushing open the door.

Kennicott had always seemed out of place there but Erik surprisingly harmonized with the spirit of the room as he stroked the books, glanced at the prints.  He held out his hands.  He came toward her.  She was weak, betrayed to a warm softness.  Her head was tilted back.  Her eyes were closed.  Her thoughts were formless but many-colored.  She felt his kiss, diffident and reverent, on her eyelid.

Then she knew that it was impossible.

She shook herself.  She sprang from him.  “Please!” she said sharply.

He looked at her unyielding.

“I am fond of you,” she said.  “Don’t spoil everything.  Be my friend.”

“How many thousands and millions of women must have said that!  And now you!  And it doesn’t spoil everything.  It glorifies everything.”

“Dear, I do think there’s a tiny streak of fairy in you—­whatever you do with it.  Perhaps I’d have loved that once.  But I won’t.  It’s too late.  But I’ll keep a fondness for you.  Impersonal—­I will be impersonal!  It needn’t be just a thin talky fondness.  You do need me, don’t you?  Only you and my son need me.  I’ve wanted so to be wanted!  Once I wanted love to be given to me.  Now I’ll be content if I can give. . . .  Almost content!

“We women, we like to do things for men.  Poor men!  We swoop on you when you’re defenseless and fuss over you and insist on reforming you.  But it’s so pitifully deep in us.  You’ll be the one thing in which I haven’t failed.  Do something definite!  Even if it’s just selling cottons.  Sell beautiful cottons—­caravans from China——­”

“Carol!  Stop!  You do love me!”

“I do not!  It’s just——­Can’t you understand?  Everything crushes in on me so, all the gaping dull people, and I look for a way out——­Please go.  I can’t stand any more.  Please!”

He was gone.  And she was not relieved by the quiet of the house.  She was empty and the house was empty and she needed him.  She wanted to go on talking, to get this threshed out, to build a sane friendship.  She wavered down to the living-room, looked out of the bay-window.  He was not to be seen.  But Mrs. Westlake was.  She was walking past, and in the light from the corner arc-lamp she quickly inspected the porch, the windows.  Carol dropped the curtain, stood with movement and reflection paralyzed.  Automatically, without reasoning, she mumbled, “I will see him again soon and make him understand we must be friends.  But——­The house is so empty.  It echoes so.”

II

Kennicott had seemed nervous and absent-minded through that supper-hour, two evenings after.  He prowled about the living-room, then growled: