‘This cannot go on,’ he said at last with low-voiced anger. ‘You are worse each time I see you--more sad, more hopeless and lifeless-looking. You will not look into my eyes now. You will not see how I love you, or you could not look so stern and immovable. If you would smile as you always have done before----’ Fulvia without a word raised her eyes and looked straight into his. There was not the shadow of a smile on her face; there was not the least sign of relaxation in what he had truly called her ‘stern’ expression. ‘No, you don’t smile! What is the meaning of it? The last time we met you told me you had lost that despair, that carelessness whether you lived or died. You looked quite glad, Fulvia mia. But to-day it is all there again, and I believe you will dare to tell me that I do not love you enough, could not make you happy.’ ‘No, no, no; it is not that! I get depressed oftener than I used to do. I feel very miserable this morning. I can’t cast it off all in a moment. But I want to live,’ she whispered, in a passionate abandonment of eagerness--‘I want to live. To die now, after all the death I have lived through, with life just breaking, just holding out its hand to me--oh, by all the gods! it surely cannot happen--such a thing cannot happen!’ ‘It shall not happen; I will not let it happen!’ said Hans, and had any keen observer been there--one who could have listened unmoved to the passionate utterances, and impartially weighed the meaning and value of both--that observer must have been struck with the thinness and impotence of the man’s utterances, as compared with those of the woman. He it was who counselled hope and spoke of happiness, and would hear nought of despondency, nought of doubt or difficulties. She it was who was stern and sad, and, in the midst of her agonized debate with her love, contemplated the possibility of bitterness and dissatisfaction even in the fulfilment of it. The view which each took was sufficiently typical of their respective characters. Hans would have none of disaster, none of doubt or difficulty, because he could not or would not have fronted them, had they come. She spoke of them, discussed them, expected them, because she had within her the stuff with which to battle with them. Of course, the lighter, more sanguine strain sounded the stronger at that stage of the proceedings. It made more noise, and was set in a more effective key. It imposed upon even her. ‘To live merely as you have been living, and are living just now, is a simply intolerable idea,’ he said, with considerable passion in his tones. ‘For you, it is hideous to be in that house; for me, it is like hell, only to think of your being there.’ ‘What am I to do?’ asked Fulvia faintly. For the time being there was no more firmness nor decision left in her aspect. Her lips trembled, her eyes sank and wavered, her voice shook.