"I say it must not," he shouted. "I say it is nonsense to talk of good-bye, when we have just met, when the kiss is yet warm on our lips. For a kiss is a holy thing, and I do not kiss unless it is holy. I say it is not good-bye." "I say it is and must be," she said. "You are terrible. You hurt me beyond endurance." "And why should you not be hurt? Am I to have all the pain? I want to share even that with you." "It is impossible," she said dully, unable to share, or deal with, or appreciate the violence of his passion, and falling back on the mulishness which had been developed in her through her tussles with her brothers. Through her mind shot the horrible thought:-- "We are quarrelling--already quarrelling." To her he seemed to be dragging her down, defiling her. His eyes were glaring at her with a passion that she took for sensuality, because it came out of the dinginess of his soul. And he was stiffening into an iron column of egoism, on which she knew she could make no impression. She knew, too, that her presence was aggravating the stiffening process. . . . She felt caught, trapped, and she wanted to get away. Love must be free--free as the wind on the heath, as the blossom of the wild cherry. Love must have its blossoming time, and he was demanding the full heat of the summer. . . . She must get away. "Good-bye," she said, holding out her hand. He took her hand and pulled her to him. "No! No! No!" she cried. "No! Good-bye! Good-bye!" She turned away and was gone. Unable to contain his agony, he flung himself on his bed and sobbed out his grief. "She is mine!" he moaned. "She is mine, and she cannot take herself from me." And when his tears were shed he began to think of the other women who had come to him without love, so easily, so gratefully, some of them, and this little girl who loved him could tear herself away--at a fearful cost. He knew that. But if she could tear herself away, if she could say good-bye, what could she know of love? X PARIS MENDEL was able to finish his portrait of Jacob and Golda, but only at the cost of painful and bitter labour. He was torn two ways: longing to finish it, yet dreading the end of it, for he could not see beyond it. Every picture he had painted had brought with it the certain knowledge that it would lead to a better, that he was advancing further on the road to art. But there was a finality about this picture. It was an end in itself. It was not like most of his work, one of a possible dozen or more. A certain stream of his feeling ended in it and then disappeared, leaving him without guide or direction.