“Why, that old Colin was a sort of prophet. I felt all the time as if he was writing not about himself but about me. How types repeat themselves: there is another character he mentions which so closely resembles someone we both know. Old Colin’s father in fact, Ronald Stanier, whom he describes as a drunken old sot. Good night, darling. Not a kiss? I suppose I don’t deserve one. You’re punishing me for being such a brute.” She paused at the door. There he stood, looking gaily and yet wistfully at her, with his mouth a little open, and the soft fire of his youth burning in his eyes, and she yearned for him. Surely it was not only his beauty that she adored, that physical perfection of him. There was somebody, surely, imprisoned there, who called to her through the bars of his nature and its love of evil and its hate of love. As often as she had tried to reach that prisoner it was as if the guardians of his soul, monstrous and terrifying, pushed her panic-stricken away. She hated and feared them, and their ruthless wickedness, but in spite of them she knew that she would never cease from trying to get past them, and rescuing him who lay there in iron bondage. She turned back into the room, her eyes troubled and eager, full of love, full of fear. Some gust of inspiration came to her. “Colin, you hate love,” she said, “and I can’t help giving it you. I pity you so, you know; all my heart pours itself out round you in pity. You’ve tried to kill my love, but you can’t. It’s so much stronger than either you or me----” He whipped round on her. “Good Lord, you must have misheard me,” he said. “I asked you for a kiss, not a sermon. But I don’t want either. Go to bed.”