She looked up, her face distorted, made ugly with a choked sob, stained with tears. She tried to speak. He stared at her. He was beginning to pity her.... But he must not pity her. If he did, he would despise her. He did not dare see her, so soon after this mad nonsense under the moon, as little, weak, lonely, afraid. He tried not to see her at all—and she seemed to recede from him, to grow dim and faint and remote. “Go away!” she cried, and turned her face from him, still stooped in that ridiculous, infantile, pitiful posture. He did not pity her now. He stood dazed as from a blow, dazed with the terrific shock of the impact of reality upon his dream. He tried to rouse himself, to see, to feel. But everything was misty and unreal to him. He spoke to her, as though across a vast space, dully. “So you didn’t mean it?” She sprang up. “Why are you here? Didn’t you go? Aren’t you going? Are you trying to torture me?” She advanced upon him with eyes that blazed, hair wild, and hands that had transformed themselves into claws ready to scratch and tear him. He saw all this as if it were a picture—a picture irrelevant to the text. He made a little gesture as if to turn the leaf. “So you didn’t mean it,” he said again. She stopped, close to him; looked at him searchingly. “Where have you been?” she asked uncertainly. He laughed mirthlessly. “Outside the door—looking at the moon.” “I thought—” she said. “No,” he said, quietly, sadly. All this ought to matter greatly. But somehow it didn’t matter at all. “But—” she said. They looked at each other. “So you didn’t mean it,” he said once more, like a refrain. Her demeanour changed suddenly. She looked at the clothes on the chairs and on the floor, and went over and stood beside the open suitcase. “I don’t know what I meant,” she said wearily. “I couldn’t stand it. I was going home.” She gave the suitcase a little kick, and came back to Felix. “But I don’t understand you!” she said. “What are you going to do?” “Nothing,” he said indifferently. “Felix!” she said desperately. “What has happened? Where are we? Do we love each other? I don’t understand anything any more. Tell me! Help me!” “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Oh!” she said savagely. “You don’t know! Why do you stand there and look at me like that? Are you dead, or am I?” “I don’t know.” She took hold of his shoulders fiercely, to shake him, and then dropped her hands. “Are you angry at me?” she asked. “Why?” “No,” he said. “I’m not angry. I just—don’t seem to care.” “I know I’m a fool!” she said. “And—Felix, I did mean it. I thought I did. But—it was too terrible.... After all, I’m human, Felix.” “Yes—I see you are.” “And you’re not. No—you’re not human. You’re a monster.... I—hate you! Not because of Phyllis—no; you don’t love her, either. You don’t love anybody. You stand there—can’t you understand, can’t you say something, can’t you pity me a little? Felix!”