“Nothing,” he said. “Have you?” He lifted his head and looked at her.

“Nothing at all,” said she.

And then they sat in silence, he with his head dropped. Then again he looked at her.

“Shall we be lovers?” he said.

She sat with her face averted, and did not answer. His heart struck heavily, but he did not relax.

“Shall we be lovers?” came his voice once more, with the faintest touch of irony.

Her face gradually grew dusky. And he wondered very much to see it.

“Yes,” said she, still not looking at him. “If you wish.”

“I do wish,” he said. And all the time he sat with his eyes fixed on her face, and she sat with her face averted.

“Now?” he said. “And where?”

Again she was silent for some moments, as if struggling with herself. Then she looked at him—a long, strange, dark look, incomprehensible, and which he did not like.

“You don’t want emotions? You don’t want me to say things, do you?” he said.

A faint ironic smile came on her face.

“I know what all that is worth,” she said, with curious calm equanimity. “No, I want none of that.”

“Then—?”

But now she sat gazing on him with wide, heavy, incomprehensible eyes. It annoyed him.

“What do you want to see in me?” he asked, with a smile, looking steadily back again.

And now she turned aside her face once more, and once more the dusky colour came in her cheek. He waited.

“Shall I go away?” he said at length.

“Would you rather?” she said, keeping her face averted.

“No,” he said.

Then again she was silent.

“Where shall I come to you?” he said.

She paused a moment still, then answered:

“I’ll go to my room.”

“I don’t know which it is,” he said.

“I’ll show it you,” she said.

“And then I shall come to you in ten minutes. In ten minutes,” he reiterated.

So she rose, and led the way out of the little salon. He walked with her to the door of her room, bowed his head as she looked at him, holding the door handle; and then he turned and went back to the drawing–room, glancing at his watch.

In the drawing–room he stood quite still, with his feet apart, and waited. He stood with his hands behind him, and his feet apart, quite motionless, planted and firm. So the minutes went by unheeded. He looked at his watch. The ten minutes were just up. He had heard footsteps and doors. So he decided to give her another five minutes. He wished to be quite sure that she had had her own time for her own movements.

Then at the end of the five minutes he went straight to her room, entered, and locked the door behind him. She was lying in bed, with her back to him.

He found her strange, not as he had imagined her. Not powerful, as he had imagined her. Strange, in his arms she seemed almost small and childish, whilst in daily life she looked a full, womanly woman. Strange, the naked way she clung to him! Almost like a sister, a younger sister! Or like a child! It filled him with a curious wonder, almost a bewilderment. In the dark sightlessness of passion, she seemed almost like a clinging child in his arms. And yet like a child who in some deep and essential way mocked him. In some strange and incomprehensible way, as a girl–child blindly obstinate in her deepest nature, she was against him. He felt she was not his woman. Through him went the feeling, “This is not my woman.”