Richard thought his flat was a safe place. But it wasn't. People creeping up the stairs every minute and standing still to listen. People would come and try the handle of the door. "They won't, dear. Nobody ever comes in. It has never happened. It isn't going to happen now." Yet you couldn't help thinking that just this night it would happen. She thought that Peters knew. He wouldn't come out of his door till you had turned the corner of the stairs. She thought the woman in the basement knew. She remembered the evening at Greffington: Baxter's pinched mouth and his eyes sliding sideways to look at you. She knew now what Baxter had been thinking. The woman's look was the female of Baxter's. As if that could hurt you! VI. "Mary, do you know you're growing younger every minute?" "I shall go on growing younger and younger till it's all over." "Till what's all over?" "This. So will you, Richard." "Not in the same way. My hair isn't young any more. My face isn't young any more." "I don't want it to be young. It wasn't half so nice a face when it was young.... Some other woman loved it when it was young." "Yes. Another woman loved it when it was young." "Is she alive and going about?" "Oh, yes; she's alive and she goes about a lot." "Does she love you now?" "I suppose she does." "I wish she didn't." "You needn't mind her, Mary. She was never anything to me. She never will be." "But I do mind her. I mind her awfully. I can't bear to think of her going about and loving you. She's no business to.... Why do I mind her loving you more than I'd mind your loving her?" "Because you like loving more than being loved." "How do you know?" "I know every time I hold you in my arms." There have been other women then, or he wouldn't know the difference. There must have been a woman that he loved. I don't care. It wasn't the same thing. "What are you thinking?" "I'm thinking nothing was ever the same thing as this." "No.... Whatever we do, Mary, we mustn't go back on it.... If we could have done anything else. But I can't see.... It's not as if it could last long. Nothing lasts long. Life doesn't last long." He sounded as if he were sorry, as if already, in his mind, he had gone back on it. After three days. "You're not _sorry_, Richard?" "Only when I think of you. The awful risks I've made you take." "Can't you see I _like_ risks? I always have liked risks. When we were children my brothers and I were always trying to see just how near we could go to breaking our necks." "I know you've courage enough for anything. But that was rather a different sort of risk." "No. No. There are no different sorts of risk. All intense moments of danger are the same. It's always the same feeling. I don't know whether I've courage or not, but I do know that when danger comes you don't care. You're hoisted up above caring." "You _do_ care, Mary."