He could not resist. A wonderful feeling of intimacy overwhelmed him as he watched her switch on the lights and bring out a decanter, a syphon and glasses. She put them on the table and motioned him towards it, placing one foot on the fender to warm herself before the glowing embers. His eyes did not leave hers. There was a surge of blood in his head. One of his hands fixed on her bare arm; with the other he drew her towards him, crushed her against his breast; she lay unresisting in his arms while he covered her lips, her neck, her shoulders, with hot kisses, some quick and passionate, others lingering, full of tenderness. Then she gently repulsed him and freed herself. Jack,' she said softly, 'you shouldn't have done that. You don't know . . . you don't know . . .' He drew his hand over his forehead. His brain seemed to clear a little. The maddening mystery of it all formed into a question. 'Victoria, why are those two razors on your dressing table?' She looked at him a brief space. Then, very quietly, with the deliberation of a surgeon, 'Need you ask? Do you not understand what I am?' His eyes went up towards the ceiling; his hands clenched; a queer choked sound escaped from his throat. Victoria saw him suffer, wounded as an æsthete, wounded in his traditional conception of purity, prejudiced, un-understanding. For a second she hated him as one hates a howling dog on whose paw one has trodden. 'Oh,' he gasped, 'oh.' Victoria watched him through her downcast eyelashes. Poor boy, it had to come. Pandora had opened the chest. Then he looked at her again with returning sanity. 'Why didn't you tell me before? I can't bear it. You, whom I thought. . . . I can't bear it.' 'Poor boy.' She took his hand. It was hot and dry. 'I can't bear it,' he repeated dully. 'I had to. It was the only way.' 'There is always a way. It's awful.' His voice broke. 'Jack,' she said softly, 'the world's a hard place for women. It takes from them either hard labour or gratification. I've done my best. For a whole year I worked. I worked ten hours a day, I've starved almost, I've swabbed floors. . . .' He withdrew his hand with a jerk. He could bear that even less than her confession. 'Then a man came,' she went on relentlessly, 'a good man who offered me ease, peace, happiness. I was poor, I was ill. What could I do? Then he died and I was alone. What could I do? Ah, don't believe mine is a bed of roses, Jack!' He had turned away, and was looking into the dying fire. His ideals, his prejudices, all were in the melting pot. Here was the woman who had been his earliest dream, degraded, irretrievably soiled. Whatever happened he could not forget; not even love could break down the terrific barrier which generations of hard and honest men of Rawsley had erected in his soul between straight women and the others. But she was the dream still: beautiful, all that his heart desired; such that (and he felt it like an awful taunt) he could not give her up.