He had said so much to her in the past with his eager lips and words. Now, for some time, he had been saying everything, while seeming to say nothing. He held her pressed against him. “Ah dearest----” She stirred. “But I'm not good.” “You are. But you're not kind to me often.” “Not often,” she murmured. He stooped; in the darkness he could say it--the old, old question which, through repetition, had lost its generosity and splendor. “Am I never going to make you love me?” She turned her face away, so that his kiss fell on her neck. “I don't know, don't know, Lorie? How should I? I don't want to hurt you. You do believe me when I say that? But I'm fickle. I'm not at all what you think me. I'm all wrong somewhere inside--cold and bad-hearted.” He laid his cheek against hers, holding her more tightly. “Little Eve. Please! You shan't accuse yourself. It wounds.” She broke away, but only that she might return of herself. She caught him by the lapels of his coat and tiptoed against him. “But I am. Harry's quite right to hate me. I send you on long journeys, and you can't forget me. I won't love you myself, and I keep you from loving another woman. You offer me your soul, and I allow you to go thirsty. I torture you, and give you nothing.” He spoke very gently, for the first time honest. “I can put it in fewer words: you want to be loved; you won't pay the price of loving. Isn't that it?” She pressed her golden head against his shoulder in ashamed assent. Behind her shuttered eyes she had the vision of a long white road leading up to a city, of a curly-headed boy and an elfin-girl steering through the traffic beneath street lamps. She wanted to have the palm without the dust, to be a mother without the sacrifice of having children. Seeing the vision of children going from her, and knowing that he would understand, she whispered, “One day I shall be old--and I shall have missed all that.” “Poor little Eve! Poor little girl!” He picked her up in his arms and commenced to walk through the twilight, across fields, to the cottage. She raised her hand and touched his cheek. “You wonderful, strong Faun Man.” He halted in his stride and bent over her; then went on into the shadows. CHAPTER XXVII--PETER FINDS A FAIRY At the Faun Man's birth an angel and a witch attended. The angel brought him the supreme gift of making people love him. The witch made the gift fatal, by wishing that he might be loved not as a man, but as a woman is loved--with jealousy. So his friends were all enemies to each other because they had to share him. Even Canute was like that; he had to be chained when admirers were calling.