“I know, I know,” he exclaimed, “but I couldn’t help it. I can’t now. I love her. I can’t help that, can I? I’m miserable without her. I see the folly of it all, but I’m crazy about her. The more she disliked me the more I loved her. And I love her now, this minute. I can’t help it. There were days when she tortured me so that I vomited, from sheer nervousness. I was sick and run down. I have been cold with sweat in her presence and when she was away and I didn’t know where she was. I have walked the streets for hours, for whole days at a time, because I couldn’t eat or sleep and didn’t know what to do. By God!” Once more the pause and a clenching of the hands. “And all I could do was think and think and think. And that is all I do now really—think and think and think. I’ve never been myself since she went away. I can’t shake it off. I live up there, yes. But why? Because I think she might come back some day, and because we lived there together. I wait and wait. I know it’s foolish, but still I wait. Why? God only knows. And yet I wait. Oh,” he sighed, “and it’s three years now. Three years!” He paused and gazed at me and I at him, shaken by a fact that was without solution by any one. Here he was—the one who had understood so much about women. But where was she, the one he had sought to enlighten, to make more up-to-date and liberal? I wondered where she was, whether she ever thought of him even, whether she was happy in her new freedom. And then, without more ado, he slipped on his raincoat, took up his umbrella, and stalked out into the rain, to walk and think, I presume. And I, closing the door on him, studied the walls, wondering. The despair, the passion, the rage, the hopelessness, the love. “Truly,” I thought, “this is love, for one at least. And this is marriage, for one at least. He is spiritually wedded to that woman, who despises him, and she may be spiritually wedded to another man who may despise her. But love and marriage, for one, at least, I have seen here in this room to-night, and with mine own eyes.” XI FULFILMENT