She stood by the door that she had closed, and gazed at him. It was without will, or hope, or feeling that she gazed, as if he were a part only of that alien world she had looked at, and this outward seeing was relentless. A meagre, commonplace, almost comic little man. She saw behind him his trite and colourless antecedents; she saw before him--and her--the future, trite and colourless too, but for the extraneous glitter of the millions that surrounded him as incongruously as a halo would have done. He was an angel, of course; he was good; but he was only that; there were no varieties, no graces, no mysteries. His very interests were as meagre as his personality; he had hardly a taste, except the taste for doing his best. Books, music, pictures--all the great world of beauty and intellect that the world of goodness and workaday virtues existed, perhaps, only to make possible--its finer, more ethereal superstructure--only counted for Franklin as recreations, relaxations, things half humorously accepted as one accepts a glass of lemonade on a hot day. Not only was he without charm, but he was unaware of charm; he didn't see it or feel it or need it. And she, who had seen and felt, she who had known Gerald and Helen, must be satisfied with this. It was this that she must strive to be worthy of. She was unworthy, and she knew it; but that acceptation was only part of the horror of defeat. And the soulless gaze with which she looked at him oddly chiselled her pallid face. She was like a dumb, classic mask, too impersonal for tragedy. Her lips were parted in their speechlessness and her eyes vacant of thought. Then, after that soulless seeing, she realised that she had frightened Franklin. He came to her. 'Dear--what is the matter?' he asked. He came so near that she looked into his eyes. She looked deeply, for a long time, in silence. And while she looked, while Franklin's hands gently found and held hers, life came to her with dreadful pain again. She felt, rather than knew--and with a long shudder--that the world was vast; she felt and feared it as vast and alien. She felt that she was alone, and the loneliness was a terror, beating upon her. And she felt--no longer seeing anything but the deeps of Franklin's eyes--that he was her only refuge; and closing her own eyes she stumbled towards him and he received her in his arms. They sat on the sofa, and Franklin clasped her while she wept, and she seemed to re-enter childhood where all that she wanted was to cry her heart out and have gentle arms around her while she confessed every wrong-doing that had made a barrier between herself and her mother's heart. 'O Franklin,' she sobbed, 'I'm so unhappy!' He said nothing, soothing her as a mother might have done.