She was cruel, merciless in her hour of seeming triumph. She loved him more passionately than ever now that he was a being dethroned from heaven. She had thought formerly: I cannot understand him: we are on a different plane. But now she thought: He has come down to my plane. One thing at least I can understand: I can understand why he wanted to kiss me. And that crude fragment of understanding was more precious to her than all the subtleties and spiritual nuances which had made his soul a hitherto uncharted sea. If she could break his ideals, if she could shatter everything in him that had nothing to do with her, she would be glad. Already, not content with the footing she had gained on what had seemed an unscalable cliff, she wanted to dominate the heights and destroy everything that was independent of her. Never had the essential selfishness of her nature so revealed itself. She grudged him every acre of his soul that was not sown with seeds of her own planting. She wanted him, all of him, passionately, selfishly: his soul and intellect would be for ever beyond her, so she was jealous of their freedom. That he should fall from the lofty heights of his idealism was epic, a thing of high tragedy, yet thrilling with passion: that she should be the means of it was something that convulsed her with rapture. Her passion was terrible and destructive. She wanted it to scorch his soul until he desired nothing save what she could give. She wanted entire possession of him: she grudged him everything that was beyond her comprehension. § 10 All this was somewhat premature. As yet he had not spoken a word save what was easily compatible with disinterested friendship. He had treated her many times with such curtness and incivility that it seemed absurd on the face of it to imagine that he could love her. And yet there was in her that strange instinct which told her that he did. After her return from Cambridge she began to wonder when she should see him again. Since she had left Mrs. Carbass and had taken the cottage at High Wood, he had been a moderately frequent visitor. He liked the situation of “Elm Cottage,” he liked to sit in a deck-chair on the lawn and watch the sun dipping down over the roofs of Upton Rising. The æsthetic pleasure made him talkative and companionable. In the summer time she would open the windows and play Debussy on the baby grand piano she had bought. She had furnished the interior in masculine taste. There were great brown leather armchairs of the kind common enough in clubs, and innumerable facilities for smoking (she was not a great smoker herself), and a general atmosphere of freedom and geniality. She had bought an expensive club-fender with leather seats at either end and a leather rail, because she had noticed that at his own house he liked to sit with his back to the flames. The front room was really very comfortable and cosy, though she was lost when she sat in either of the two great armchairs.