The Nest, The White Pagoda, The Suicide, A Forsaken Temple, Miss Jones and The Masterpiece

of symptoms, the interview with the great specialist to whom his own doctor, unwilling to pronounce a final verdict, had sent him. He begged her to spare him fu

st his shoulder, weeping

the iron walls enclosed them; there were no distances; there was no horizon. But within the circle

m and came to her husband from the interview with a composure that almost made him laugh. It would have hurt her feelings for him to laugh at her, and he listened gravely while she told him that Sir Walter, now, was going to accept the big post in India that, for her sake, he had been on the point of refusing. He was going away that very n

middle and walked away from it. He didn't need her to say it again; he saw that she had

nt. Oh, I know that I did, too!-don't think me hard and self-righteous. But see-see, darling, what you have saved me from! Remember what he w

ardly over the ruthlessness of women towards the man, loved no longer, who has tarnished their image in their own eyes. The angel held him fast in Paradise, but something in him, a mere sense of humour, the humour of the o

was joy; she knew how to make it, to give it. She surprised him continually with her inventiveness in rapture. When fear came upon them, she folded it from him with encircling arms. When fear passed, she seemed to lead him out into the dew and sunlight of early morning and to show him new paths, new flowers, new bowers of bliss. All artifice, all self-centred dreaminess, all the littler charms, dropped from her. She was as candid, as single-minded, as passionate as a newly

motives, explaining themselves, accusing themselves, for the joy of being forgiven-"Tell me; you loved me so much that you were willing to give me up to

rated summer-house; Kitty had insisted on that punishment for herself, had knelt down before her husband there

ittle relief for the obvious answer: "But

arling, only knew how much you cared when you thought I was deceiving you, lying to you, in saying that I loved you; but you w

om the outer world blew into Paradise through an unguarded gate. Well, why should not the dear angel have a little dust on its shining hair? It was a foolish angel, as he knew; and it lived for love, as he knew; and women who did that and who didn't get loved enough grew to look subtle-he remembered the swift train of th

her face on his breast. "Oh, Nick,

him think, at times, of the outer world, of his old judgments and values. He would have had to fight for her, of course; he would have had to save her; but it wouldn't have been because he had

each other past unconscious eyes; they had lovers' dexterities in meeting unobserved by their guests, gay little escapades when they would run away for an hour drifting on the river or wandering in the woods. And the formalities and chatter of social life-all these queer people interested in queer things, people who used the present only for the future, who were always planning and lookin

and said to her. "It's for that, I suppose, that a Pierrot is such an

so beautifully appropriate,-for what is literalness but a seeing of the fact as

musing on our strange state. It's

bitual with her of late, and hid her eyes on his should

fancy as separative, and he had no

g of mood in Paradise. Emotion was the being of

endulum swung spontaneously during those first weeks, it swung as their hearts beat, from need to response. And, at the beginning of the third week, it was not so much a faltering in the need or the re

clung to. The sense of desperate tendrils enlacing him was almost suffocating, and each tendril craved for recognition; a lapse, a look, an inattention was the cutting of something that bled, and clung the closer. Every moment was precious, and any not given to love was a robbery from her dwindlin

eavy sweetness as though a noonday sun beat down changelessly upon them. The dew was gone, and though Kitty remained a primitive Eve, he hi

, look and gesture. But for him this charm and this renewal were lacking. He could not feel such pity, either for her or for himself. She was to live, poor little Kitty, and, by degrees,

t more if only Kitty hadn't been there to feel it so superabundantly for him. No: he could keep up; he could se

ent was awake and walking in Paradise

moment's notice, and must remember to look up and smile at her or to read some passage aloud to her at every few pages. But he had been trying thus to combine oblivion and alertness when a longer interval than usual of the first held him beguiled, and alertness, when it returned, returned too late. Kitty's eyes made him think of the eyes she had gazed with on the day of revelation in the library. They were candid, they wer

ng down beside his chair and put

asked her, as he had asked on

-are you feeling w

perhaps he was feeling worse and the end was approaching. If so, any languor would be taken as symptomatic of dissolution

ing back her hair. "You know, I shall suffe

d?" Another alarm

Of course, one doesn'

care, were cruel; that she would feel them as cruel; he had

ed. "You speak as if

rling! How could

breast,-"Am I tiring you? Do you sometimes wa

ay, a phantasmagoric setting to this knot of human pain and fear, and he said to himself that unless he were very ca

he fear of any misunderstanding between them. "There would be no me left, Kitty, if you went away. I am you-

ping. Then in a voice curiously hushed and controlled she said:

be at peace, d

g life. You don't mind

y-Kit

o give you but love. And you are tired of that. You are going, you are going for ever. I s

love, the personal note that her quick ear had felt fading. She sobbed, and sobbed, but answered him at last, in the pathetic little child language of thei

in your body?-not in your soul?" she

liked to answer for her complete reassurance. The funny, ugly, pathetic truth

s of pucks and elves to tilt and smile in the breeze-shaken flowers;-that subtle gaze, that sinister smile, o

n. Not affinity, not the growing needs of normal life had brought

id not know it, but she would rather have him dead than have him loveless. That was the truth that smiled the sini

d refuge only in the pretence of dying, disgust crept into the weariness, he b

sciousness of Kitty-Kitty, alert and agonised in her suspicion. It was a nostalgic longing for the old, tame, dusty life, his

o up to town. Her face grew ashen. "The doc

passing through. I heard from him

her and think about

st be of any use I

tness in his voice an

nd ask him." She, too, was assuming somethin

He is on his way

now. And London in August!" Her vo

omise you I wil

don't want to get away!"-The falsity broke down and the full anguish of her suspicion was in her voice and eyes. It was this sincerity that pierced him and made him helpless-sick and helpless. He was able now to blindfold its dreadful clear-sightedness by swift resource: he acted his delight, his gra

about and confused her sense of direction, as if in a merry game, h

itty waited, and his heart smote him when he found her sitting just as he had left her, mute, white, smiling and enduring. She hadn't even been to her dressmaker's or done any

the same time! You know I told you I wanted to see you in a pale blue lawn-isn't lawn the pretty

amused, his laughter hurt her. She gazed at the stage with wide, vacant eyes. He felt the strain of being in town with this desperate devotion beside him worse than the strain of being shut up with it in the country; for there Kitty need hide and repress nothing, and his danger of hurting her by forgetfulness wa

holding hands and very silent, but that, from time to time, when their e

walls and stifling sweetness of Parad

ly felt the bliss of home-coming, the longing for the nest. It was all nest now; there wa