His attitude to her, too, was puzzling. She wanted to break down that iron control which he held over himself. And she seemed as far away as ever from doing it. His kiss had been a thing of careful precision. She could feel the restraint he was imposing on himself and she could discern also that he was capable of much greater restraints than that. His kiss was not like the kiss she might have received had not the porter pulled him down from the foot-board. Even now she was instinctively conscious that that moment as the train was leaving the platform at Cambridge represented the high-water mark of his relationship with her. With all her efforts she had not induced in him a repetition of that singularly rare mood of his. And now, moreover, he was on his guard. The struggle would be epic. She was gratified that he loved her. Though she knew how desperately he would fight against submission to her, though she knew the great intellectual and spiritual gulf between them which made him desire above all things that he should retain his complete freedom and independence, yet the mere fact that he loved her was capable of giving her intense satisfaction. And once again she was terrifically jealous of his wider interests and sympathies. She was utterly, inhumanly selfish. She knew it, and it hurt her infinitely to know it, and to know that he knew it. Some demon had entered her soul at birth and dominated her ever selfishly, and try as she would she could not shake it off. She could not repress her own miserable jealousies, her own contemptible conceit, her own despicable selfishness. In her own heart she knew that Verreker despised her, and that he had a right to do so. All the joy of finding her love reciprocated was tinged with the melancholy of realizing the rottenness of her own soul. There were moments when she felt she was spiritually damned, that a canker was eating at her soul which would leave her unworthy to live. And yet, with more than a touch of hysteria, she consoled herself with the thought that he loved her: she was abundantly, rapturously happy about that, using it to mask the horror of her own soul, as one who dances heartlessly on the very brink of destruction.... § 2 It was New Year’s Day when she saw him next. He was walking down the slope to Bockley Station, and she was coming up from one of the trains. A dim presentiment of coming tragedy overswept her as she saw him coming, so that, without knowing exactly why, she would not have stopped of her own accord. But he insisted on stopping and shaking hands, and wishing her a happy new year (a touch of sentimentality which she was surprised to hear from him).