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“I am afraid,” she said, “that I wasn’t kind in asking you to supper. ”

“I’m not used to it,” he said, smiling with his mouth, showing the interspaced white teeth. His eyes, however, were steady and unseeing.

“It’s not that,” she said hastily. Her repose was exquisite and her dark grey eyes rich with understanding. He felt afraid of her as she sat there, as he began to grow conscious of her.

“How do you get on alone?” she asked.

He glanced away to the fire.

“Oh—” he answered, shifting uneasily, not finishing his answer.

Her face settled heavily.

“How close it is in this room. You have such immense fires. I will take off my coat,” she said.

He watched her take off her hat and coat. She wore a cream cashmir blouse embroidered with gold silk. It seemed to him a very fine garment, fitting her throat and wrists close. It gave him a feeling of pleasure and cleanness and relief from himself.

“What were you thinking about, that you didn’t get washed?” she asked, half intimately. He laughed, turning aside his head. The whites of his eyes showed very distinct in his black face.

“Oh,” he said, “I couldn’t tell you. ”

There was a pause.

“Are you going to keep this house on?” she asked.

He stirred in his chair, under the question.

“I hardly know,” he said. “I’m very likely going to Canada. ”

Her spirit became very quiet and attentive.

“What for?” she asked.

Again he shifted restlessly on his seat.

“Well”—he said slowly—“to try the life. ”

“But which life?”

“There’s various things—farming or lumbering or mining. I don’t mind much what it is. ”

“And is that what you want?”

He did not think in these times, so he could not answer.

“I don’t know,” he said, “till I’ve tried. ”

She saw him drawing away from her for ever.

“Aren’t you sorry to leave this house and garden?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered reluctantly. “I suppose our Fred would come in-that’s what he’s wanting. ”

“You don’t want to settle down?” she asked.

He was leaning forward on the arms of his chair. He turned to her. Her face was pale and set. It looked heavy and impassive, her hair shone richer as she grew white. She was to him something steady and immovable and eternal presented to him. His heart was hot in an anguish of suspense. Sharp twitches of fear and pain were in his limbs. He turned his whole body away from her. The silence was unendurable. He could not bear her to sit there any more. It made his heart go hot and stifled in his breast.

“Were you going out to-night?” she asked.

“Only to the New Inn,” he said.

Again there was silence.

She reached for her hat. Nothing else was suggested to her. She hadto go. He sat waiting for her to be gone, for relief. And she knew that if she went out of that house as she was, she went out a failure. Yet she continued to pin on her hat; in a moment she would have to go. Something was carrying her.

Then suddenly a sharp pang, like lightning, seared her from head to foot, and she was beyond herself.

“Do you want me to go?” she asked, controlled, yet speaking out of a fiery anguish, as if the words were spoken from her without her intervention.

He went white under his dirt.

“Why?” he asked, turning to her in fear, compelled.

“Do you want me to go?” she repeated.

“Why?” he asked again.

“Because I wanted to stay with you,” she said, suffocated, with her lungs full of fire.

His face worked, he hung forward a little, suspended, staring straight into her eyes, in torment, in an agony of chaos, unable to collect himself. And as if turned to stone, she looked back into his eyes. Their souls were exposed bare for a few moments. It was agony. They could not bear it. He dropped his head, whilst his body jerked with little sharp twitchings.