"Aren't we lovers, Julia?" he insisted at last, childishly. He was embarrassed and wanted to make a joke of his own mood, but she saw that he was trembling. His mouth smiled. His eyes were clouded and watchful with resentment. "How deeply are we lovers, Dudley?" She leaned her cheek against his breast. She did not wish to look at him. Suddenly she was terrified that a lover was able to give her nothing of what other women received. "You love me. Look at me, Julia. Say you love me." Her lids fluttered, but she kept her eyes fixed upon his small plump hand, white through its black down. The hand was all at once a pitiful trembling thing which belonged to neither of them. It had a poor detached involuntary life. Because of the hand she felt sorry for him, and she said, warmly and abruptly, "I love you." Her eyes, when they met his, were filled with tears. Yet she knew the love she gave him was not the thing for which he asked. He was suspicious. His hands fell away from her. "Was I mistaken yesterday?" His voice sounded bitter and tired. She was pained and her fear of losing him made her ardent. "No, Dudley! No!" Her face flushed, and her eyes, lifted to his, were dim with emotion. "Did you understand what I hoped--how much I hoped for when I asked you to come here to-day, Julia?" "Yes," she said. All the time she felt that she loved him because they were both suffering and in a kind of danger from each other which he was unable to see. She loved him because she was the only person who could protect him from herself. She was oppressed by her accurate awareness of him: of his hot flushed face close to hers, the shape of his nose, the pores of his skin, the beard in his cheeks, the irregular contour of his head matted with dark curls, his ears that she thought ugly with the tufts of hair that grew above their lobes, his neck which was short and white and a little thick, and his hands, hairy and at the same time womanish. Already she knew him so intimately that it gave her a sense of guilt toward him. Her recognition of him was so cruel, and he seemed unmindful of it. When she had reassured him that she loved him, he drew her down beside him on the couch with the black and gold cover. He wanted to make tea for her and to show her some drawings that had been sent to him for his judgment. She knew that while he talked he was on his guard before her. It seemed ugly to her that they were afraid of each other.