“If you promise to wake up and forget it.” “Tell me first.” And so, rather haltingly, but with growing confidence, Eve told the stranger of her hopes: “I can see clearly now, it was a companion Wynne needed, that’s all—a mental companion. Had I been a man I might have entered more deeply into his life. You see, we fought to rise out of this rut, and now he has begun to rise he finds that I am part of the rut—something to be left behind. I believe a man and woman were not intended to live together as we have—there was no fire, you see—we were just partners. The marriage link cannot be welded without fire. I wonder—do you understand what I mean?” He nodded gravely. “Wynne’s was all mental fire. The embers of his love for me have never glowed into a flame.” She laughed to smother a sob. “They are out—out altogether—dead and cold! At least it seems so. I have been like a book to him—an information bureau and debating society in one. Ever ready to supply the thoughts that were not self-revealing. And now I have been read from cover to cover, and it’s foolish, I suppose, to expect a place in the new library.” “What a damnable story!” said Quiltan, with sudden fierceness. “I feel like—kicking him.” “Don’t feel like that. Everybody has wanted to kick Wynne. It was the first thing which drew me toward him. And when you look at it all from his point of view, you _can see_.” “_You_ find excuses for him?” “Easily.” “How—how?” “I love him.” “Still?” “Yes. And I’d go through just such another three years if I thought that he would love me at the end—gladly I would.” “But suppose he never does love you! What then? How long can you last out like this? Don’t you want to live?” “Oh, yes, I want to live.” “Well then?” “But all the folk who want to live can’t have their way. Perhaps I shall just go on wanting till even the want dies.” “That’s unthinkable.” “But very possible.” She became suddenly aware of the intensity of his expression. The sinews of his close-shut hands showed white, and in his eyes burnt a strange fire. An odd fear seized her, and to cover her nervousness she quoted at random. “Don’t you remember the Browning lines: “‘Some with lives that came to nothing, Some with deeds as well undone, Death came tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.’” He seized on the purport of a single line, and said: “Isn’t the alternative better, perhaps, than this?” “Death?” she queried. “‘Some with deeds as well undone.’” He spoke with a queer hoarseness. For a moment she held his eyes steadily, then with quick colour turned away her head. “I thought,” she said, “we were to be friends.” “Haven’t you had enough of friendship?” She had thought he would recover himself at the rebuke, but if anything his voice was more insistent. “Haven’t you?” he repeated. “There is no need for you to make love to me, Mr. Quiltan.” “How do you know?” he retorted. “How can you possibly say that?”