“Mammon, Mammon,” cried Wynne, for want of a better thought. “Oh no. Don’t think I crave for money, for it isn’t so; but one must have money if one is never to think of it.” “Why?” “Isn’t half the sorrow in the world traceable to such little causes as an extra halfpenny on a quartern of bread?” “Not untrue,” Wynne nodded. His eyes fell on the dirty gas-ring of the grate, and he frowned. “Why do you come here, then?” “Don’t you know?” she replied. “No. It’s squalid enough!” “Then it is because you are the first real person I have ever met outside the cover of a book.” “I give you something, then?” “A great deal.” A modesty seized him, touched with self-reproach. “Only because it pleases me,” he said, brusquely. “The giving is done by you. That much I realize.” “I’m glad—and I’m glad to give.” “Yes, a woman’s life is to give—that’s natural law—the only kind of law worth accepting.” He hesitated—then, “Are you satisfied to give?” She smiled her wise, intricate smile, and he did not wait for the answer. “You never smile as you should,” he reproached. “Yours is a thinking smile—perplexing. Do you never smile or laugh from sheer happiness?” “Perhaps I have never yet been sheerly happy.” “What would make you?” “I haven’t found out.” “But I want to know. If you smiled for me you would seem less remote.” “Am I remote?” “Yes—remote is the word.” He looked at her fixedly, then shook himself and began to pace up and down the room. When next he spoke his voice was querulous and irritable: “I should have been working all this while. The train of my thoughts is all upset—disordered. It is unlike you to disturb me. I’ve lost an hour. Tomorrow I must work all day—alone.” “Go back to yourself,” she said, gently. She did not leave at once, but half an hour later he looked up and saw she was buttoning her coat. “You needn’t go.” “I had better,” she said; and at the door—“I come here too often, perhaps. It is selfish of me.” “But I like you to be here—I want you here. I meant nothing—only I’m a little keyed up and worried. I don’t know why.” “It’s all right,” said Eve. “Just for tomorrow I’ll stay away.” “You want to?” “No; but it is good sometimes to do what one doesn’t want. G’bye.” And she was gone. That night, as he lay in bed, the same feeling of self-reproach which had sprung into being for an instant during their talk came back to him heavily. “What do I do for her? Nothing.” IV The thought awoke with him next day, and seemed to write itself across the pages of his manuscript. He could not concentrate, and the ink on his dipped pen dried times without number, and not a line was committed to the paper. The hour for their united meal came, and with it a feeling of loneliness and disappointment. He made no attempt to set the table for himself, but sat staring dully at the criss-cross lines of the window transoms, fiddling aimlessly with the books and papers before him.