"Sometimes," he said, in a low tone, "I think that it is my fate to disappoint myself and all other people. Lady Malingcourt, can you tell me why it is that now when many of the things I have dreamed of are becoming realities, my desire for them seems sometimes honeycombed with weakness? Often lately I have wished myself back at my cottage; I have closed my eyes, and the old days of poverty, of freedom, have seemed wonderfully sweet. It is weakness," he went on, a sudden hoarse passion in his voice, "cursed weakness. I will stamp it down. I shall outgrow it. But it's there, and it's a live thing." Afterward he liked to think of her as she had seemed that night. The weariness, the flippancy of her outlook upon life seemed for the moment to have fallen away like a mask. The woman shone out--flamed in her eyes, was manifest in her softened tone. "It is the toll we all have to pay," she said. "We expect too much of life. The things which look so beautiful to us when we are hammering at the gates crumble into dust when we have passed through into their midst, and seek to grasp them." "Is there nothing in life," he said, "which is real--which remains?" She did not answer him, her silence was surely purposeful. She sat with half-closed eyes, as though listening to the music of the breeze-shaken limes, and Strone felt his heart beating madly. The significance of his question and her silence were suddenly revealed to him. A mad desire possessed him to seize her hands, to force her to look at him. Instinct told him that the moment was propitious, that the great gulf between them was bridged over by a sudden emotional crisis, which might never occur again. She raised her eyes to his, and he was amazed at their wonderful depth and color. The change came home to him, and his own pulses beat fiercely. "Let us talk about Bangdon," she said. "Do you remember the first time I saw you? John brought you into dinner." "If I had known," he remarked, smiling, "that there was a woman there, I should have run for my life." "Yet I do not think that you were shy. What a surprise you were to me. You wore the clothes of a mechanic, and you talked--as even John could never have talked. Do you know, I think that you are a very wonderful person. It is so short a time ago." He turned toward her, and his face was suddenly haggard. "It is a lifetime--a chaos of months and years. Let us talk of something else." "No! Why?" "Don't you understand?" he asked fiercely.