The soft weight of her, her warmth, the familiar scent of her hair and her tumbled gown, snatched him back into departing days. He suddenly lost his self-command, or rather his sense of the present. He clasped her to him, and kissed her and kissed her--as eagerly, passionately and tenderly as ever in Furnace Wood. She did not resist or shrink, her eyes were closed, and she lay back a dead weight in his arms, drinking her last despairing draught of happiness.... His clasp grew tighter--oh, that he would crush the life out of her as she lay there under his lips!... Then suddenly he dropped his arms, and they staggered back from each other, piteously conscious once more of the present and its doom. "Janey, Janey ... I can't--I mustn't love you." "But you do love me----" She sank into a chair, and covered her face. "Yes--I love you. But it's in byways of love. Can't you understand?" She shook her head. "Don't you see that, all through, my love for you has been unworthy--the worst in me?..." She tried to speak, but her words were unintelligible. "You and I have never been happy together----" "Never?..." "Yes--at times. But it was a blasting, scorching happiness--there was no peace in it. We doubted each other." "I never doubted you." "Yes, you did. When I said good-bye to you before going to London, you made me promise never to forget how much I'd loved you." "But it wasn't you I doubted then. I doubted fate, chance, God, anything you like--but not you." She had recovered her self-control, and her voice was hard and even. "Oh, don't, Janey!" "Why not?--why should I spare you? You haven't spared me." "You mustn't think I intended you to--to hear things in this way. I'd meant to give you an explanation first. But the news leaked out----" "Well, you can give me an explanation now." "I'll try--but it will be very difficult," he said falteringly. "You're like a flood to me--I feel giddy and helpless when I'm with you. I don't think I'll ever be able to make you understand. I wish you hadn't come like this--I wish----" "Please go on, Quentin." Her manner disconcerted him. He could not understand her alternations between hysteria and stolid calm. "You mustn't think I don't realise I've behaved like a skunk. But I don't want to dwell on it--it would only be putting mud on my face to make you pity me--but I do ask you to try to understand me.... Janey, I've done this for your good as well as mine. You shared the misery and ruin of my love. In saving myself, I've saved you too. Janey, Janey--don't you see that our love was nothing but a rotten sickness of the soul?" He looked at her anxiously, but her face was expressionless as wood. "You and I have always been more or less wretched together, and though at first I felt our unhappiness was doing us good--strengthening us and purifying us--of late I felt it was doing us harm, it was disorganising and unmanning us...."