"My cruelty and my beastliness are nothing to the beastliness and the cruelty of art. The Lord our God is a consuming fire. You must be prepared to be burnt." "It's all very well for you, George. I don't like being burnt." That roused him; it stirred the devil in him. "Do you suppose _I_ like it? Why, you--you don't know what burning _is_. It means standing by, on fire with thirst, and seeing other people drink themselves drunk." "You don't want to be drunk, George. Any more than I do." "I do not, thank God. But it would be all the same if I did. I can't get a single thing I do want." "Can't you? I should have thought you could have got most things you really wanted." "I could if I were a grocer or a draper. Why, a hair-dresser has more mastery of the means of life." He was telling her, she knew, that he was too poor for the quest of the matchless lady; and through all his young and sombre rage of frustration there flashed forth his anger with her as the unfit. He began to tramp up and down the room again, by way of distraction from his mood. Now and then his eyes turned to her with no thought in them, only that dark, unhappy fire. He was quiet now. He had caught sight of some sheets of manuscript lying on her desk. "What's this?" he said. "Only the last thing I've written." "May I look?" "You may." He took it up and sat beside her, close beside her, and turned the leaves over with a nervous hand. He was not reading. There was no thought in his eyes. He looked at her again. She saw that he was at the mercy of his moment, and of hers. For it was her moment. There was a power that every woman had, if she cared to use it and knew how. There was a charm that had nothing to do with beauty, for it was present in the unbeautiful. These things had their life secret and apart from every other charm and every other power. His senses called to the unknown and unacknowledged sense in her. She knew that he could be hers if she answered to that call. She had only to kindle her flame, send out her signal. And she said to herself, "I can't. I can't take him like this. He isn't himself. It would be hateful of me." In that moment she had no fear. Love held her back and burning honour that hardly knew itself from shame. It accused her of having man[oe]uvred for that moment. It said, "You can't let him come in like this and trap him." Another voice in her whispered, "You fool. If you don't marry him some other woman will--in this mood of his." And honour cried, answering it, "Let her. So long as it isn't I." She had a torturing sense of his presence. And with it her fear came back to her, and she rose suddenly to her feet, and stood apart from him. He flung the manuscript into the place she had left, and bowed forward, hiding his face in his hands. He rose too, and she knew that his moment had gone. She had let it go.