Had she given, she might have won at least a part of him. David was in no state to resist self-bestowal. Unknown to himself, he was wandering through life, seeking the life that would exchange with his. Nowhere had he found it; without vision of that he would be ever tantalizingly remote from capture. He was swollen in her senses, now that he held himself stiffly away in his chair and listened to her words. Her power to take-in flooded her body and mellowed it, left dim her eyes whereby to see him. She saw his sweet heaviness beneath the drab of his suit. She had a sense of her fingers running through his hair, of being drunk with him. And it was possible! The room was quiet and suppliant. The lamp was dim for such secrecies. She fought against herself, and passion ran through her, melting her, drenching her, like tears. But she was a lady. She had not reached thirty years to be seduced by a boy who would not marry.... His visits filtered away: ceased. Again he invited her to an occasional lunch. In his heart, from it all, there remained chiefly self-rebuke. He had not been a gentleman. He had kissed her with casual flippancy: she had not understood. Why, he wondered, was he so superficial in his way with women? Why was their hold on him so slight? This was not love. Tom must be right, and love did not exist. Friendship was the deeper, lovelier passion.... At times, he recalled the little girl in the car or his mother.... * * * * * An added year upon the emptiness of David. He had a dream. He was in a pit--or was it a well? He groped round and round its circular bottom. He looked up. Far beyond his eyes was a dimness he knew was Light. It hurt him to look up. It made him dizzy. It made him tremble. He groped round and round.... Then, he stopped. Quite still. The bottom of the pit swung up and struck against his eyes. Tom lashed him from behind with a whip. “Go ahead!” Tom muttered. David faced about. The well began to swing maddingly around with shattering strokes like a vast piston. The bottom where he groped swerved up, went up, high, high. He had the sense of a terrific altitude. The well was upside down. He was tumbling, rushing down the well. Beneath him, infinitely far, he saw the dimness he knew was Light.... David awoke: horror crept over all his flesh. He clutched his bed. He lay there stabbed by every mutter of the night. It was long before his mind that was cowering far in a corner of the room came back to him, sat with him, took away his fears: before the stirrings of the dark silence ceased to be a shatter and shriek in his nerves. It was long before he forgot the dream. He made no effort to remember it. A dream was a bit of nonsense. Nonsense also that its mere coming to his mind brought back the streaking of darkness into veins of horror....