"Yes. It is worrying to find somebody believing in a God when _you_ can't believe in Him,--to have beautiful faiths offered to you which _you_ can't grasp,--and to know that there is a creature alive, a woman like yourself in everything except mind, who is holding fast a happiness which you can never attain,--no, not though you held out praying hands day and night and shouted wild appeals to the dull heavens!" At that moment she looked like a queen of tragedy,--her violet eyes ablaze,--her lips apart,--her breast heaving;----I approached her with a strange nervous hesitation and touched her hand. She gave it to me passively,--I drew it through my arm, and for a minute or two we paced silently up and down the gravel walk. The lights from the monster hotel which catered for us and our wants, were beginning to twinkle from basement to roof,--and just above the châlet we rented, a triad of stars sparkled in the shape of a trefoil. "Poor Geoffrey!" she said presently, with a quick upward glance at me,--"I am sorry for you! With all my vagaries of disposition I am not a fool, and at anyrate I have learned how to analyse myself as well as others. I read you as easily as I read a book,--I see what a strange tumult your mind is in! You love me--and you loathe me!--and the contrast of emotion makes a wreck of you and your ideals. Hush,--don't speak; I know,--I know! But what would you have me be? An angel? I cannot realize such a being for more than a fleeting moment of imagination. A saint? They were all martyred. A good woman? I never met one. Innocent?--ignorant? I told you before we married that I was neither; there is nothing left for me to discover as far as the relations between men and women are concerned,--I have taken the measure of the inherent love of vice in both sexes. There is not a pin to choose between them,--men are no worse than women,--women no worse than men. I have discovered everything--except God!--and I conclude no God could ever have designed such a crazy and mean business as human life." While she thus spoke, I could have fallen at her feet and implored her to be silent. For she was, unknowingly, giving utterance to some of the many thoughts in which I myself had frequently indulged,--and yet, from her lips they sounded cruel, unnatural, and callous to a degree that made me shrink from her in fear and agony. We had reached a little grove of pines,--and here in the silence and shadow I took her in my arms and stared disconsolately upon the beauty of her face. "Sibyl!" I whispered--"Sibyl, what is wrong with us both? How is it that we do not seem to find the loveliest side of love?--why is it that even in our kisses and embraces, some impalpable darkness comes between us, so that we anger or weary each other when we should be glad and satisfied? What is it? Can you tell? For you know the darkness is there!"