Jinny had begun to pack her manuscript (she had forgotten it till now) in the leather case it travelled in. She had a hat with a long veil on. Tanqueray's gaze took in all this and other more unmistakable signs of her departure. "What do you think you're doing?" he said. "I'm going back." "Why?" "Haven't I told you?" Positively he had forgotten Brodrick. He began all over again and continued, tenderly, patiently, with all his cold, ascendant, dispassionate lucidity, till he had convinced her that her fear was folly. She was grateful to him for that. "All the same," she said, "I'm going. I wasn't going to stay here in any case." "You were going?" "Yes." "And do you suppose I'm going to let you go? After last night?" "After--last--night--I _must_ go. And I must go back." "No. Remember what you said to me last night. We know ourselves and we know each other now as God knows us. We're not afraid of ourselves or of each other any more." "No," she said. "I am not afraid." "Well--you've had the courage to get so far, why haven't you the courage to go on?" "You think I'm a coward still?" "A coward." He paused. "I beg your pardon. I forgot that you had the courage to go back." Her face hardened as they looked at each other. "I believe after all," he said, "you're a cold little devil. You stand there staring at me and you don't care a damn." "As far as damns go, it was you, if you remember, that didn't care." "Are you always going to bring that up against me? I suppose you'll remind me next that you're a married woman and the mother of two children." "We do seem rather to have forgotten it," she said. "Jinny--_that_ ought never to have happened. You should have left that to the other women." "Why, George, that's what you said six years ago, if you remember." "You _are_----" "Yes, I know I am. You've just said so." "My God. I don't care what you are." He came to her and stood by her, with his face close to her, not touching hers, but very close. His eyes searched her. She stood rigid in her supernatural self-possession. "Jinny, you knew. You knew all the time I cared." "I thought I knew. I did know you cared in a way. But not in this way. This--this is different." She was trying to tell him that hitherto his passion had been to her such a fiery intellectual thing that it had saved her--as by fire. "It isn't different," he said gravely. "Jinny--if I only wanted you for myself--but that doesn't count as much as you think it does. If you didn't suffer----" "I'm not suffering." "You are. Every nerve's in torture. Haven't I seen you? You're ill with it now, with the bare idea of going back. I want to take you out of all that." "No, no. It isn't that. I want to go." "You don't. You don't want to own that you're beaten." "No. It's simpler than that. I don't care for you, George, not--not as you want me to." He smiled. "How do you think I want you to?" "Well--you know."