Lost her! He knows it. He feels it. There is something in her simple, plaintive exclamations, in her "I couldn't, couldn't, dear," in her abandonment to belief that he cannot love her--there is some damned, numbing essence in it that emanates as it were from her spirit and thus informs him; and thus informing him, numbs and dumbs his own. Lost her! And cannot combat it. Lost her! And has no words, no help. Fury beginning in him. Fury at his impotence mounting within him. Return to life! By God, by God, to lose it! "Essie, will you let me go, then? Now? For ever? You can't. All our love? All our happiness we're going to have?" "Oh, didn't I think you loved me truly!" Fury within him. That maddening iteration of her maddening cry! He can scarcely retain his fury. He chokes it back. He is hoarse as he grinds out words. "Think of us in a little house like we've planned." "I couldn't, dear, I couldn't!" "Think how we'll have everything we want!" "Oh, I can't bear to hear you tempting me!" Fury in a storm breaks out of him. "Oh!" he cries and makes a savage action with his arms that thrusts her from him. "Oh, for God Almighty's sake, don't drag the Bible into it!" She says: "Arthur!" He gets violently to his feet, his hands clenched, and makes again that savage, breaking action of his arms, and cries at her: "Temptation and sin and rubbish, rubbish, like that! Let it alone! If you don't love me, say so! If you're going to let me go, say so! Don't drag the Bible into it! If you don't love me, say so, say so, say so!" "Arthur, you know I love you. You don't love me, dear!" A last effort. A last control of his fury. He turns to her. "Essie, I can't live without you. Essie! Essie!" "Oh, you couldn't love me to ask me to live in sin!" That ends it. That expression--its beastly and vulgar piety, its common, vulgar phraseology--sweeps across his fury as in a rasping shudder of abhorrence. He breaks his fury out upon it. He bursts out: "By God, you're common, common! Do you think I'd marry you--you? What do you think you are? Who do you think I am? Marry you! Marry you! Let's get out of this! Let's go home, and you can tell your father and your mother!" Return to life! Gone, gone! Lost, lost! He was shaking with hate and shaking with utter fury. He walked to the door and staggered as he walked and must stop and correct his direction as though he were drunken. At the door he turned to her and saw that she remained seated, leaning back against the window, her hands clasped. He cried: "Are you coming? Are you coming?"