“Thoughts drag people down, down, don’t they?  Except for a minute or two I’ve thought clean and selfless about Louis.  Always about you I’ve thought very shiningly.  If I let go a minute the shine of you will be out of my eyes.  Do you see?  Then I’ll be like—­like any of the other women!  All soft corners and seduction.  Just while you’ve been talking to me I’ve understood that I want to be like that; that’s why I’ve been so dead this last month since you went away.  It seems a pity, doesn’t it?”

He found that it was his turn to sit speechless, watching her.

“There, now I’ve told you,” she said, and lifted her hands and let them drop again hopelessly.  “And now I’m going back to Louis.  You want my courage....  Oh God, you’ve got it!”

He still stared at her.  Quick, understanding as he was, he had not quite understood yet.  He only saw that she was still whiter, that the still hands were clenched.

“If we get any closer you’ll see the chinks in my armour.  I suppose I’ll see little dark patches in your shine....  If you didn’t think so well of me, I suppose I should just let Louis drop out—­if I didn’t think so well of you I’d give you the kisses and narcotics and seduction you’re tired of.”

“Marcella, I don’t care—­if I thought—­” he began, almost savagely.

“Oh, thoughts, thoughts!  They’re cruel!  Here we both are, thinking so much better than we can do.  No—­no!  We can do it!  Only—­we can’t do it happily.  Some day, I think, shining thinking and shining doing will be hand in hand—­”

She stood up slowly then, and turned away.  He saw her going right out of his life.  And it seemed to him just as it had seemed to her, that all he had ever done or had done to him had led up to that moment.

“Marcella,” he cried, and seized her hands again.  “I can’t let you go.  Whatever you have, whatever you are, I want you.”

“I!” she cried.  “I!  Always I!  What do you and I and any of us matter, really?  What does it matter if we do get smashed up like this if only we manage to keep our thoughts of each other clean and free from slinking things—­fears, and greeds?”

“I can’t help thinking about you!” he cried.

“I know.  I can’t, either.  That’s why we’ve to be so careful what we think.  And it’s going to be a hard, austere sort of thing for us both.  Once I saw you a beautiful thing with swift wings all torn off in a sticky mess.  Now I see you very shining—­”

She looked at him with blinded eyes.

“Always I’m going to make myself see you like that now.  Never, never will I let a greedy or unclean thought of mine dull you.  And—­please—­you’ll try to—­to—­do the same for me, won’t you?”

He could not speak yet.  He realized how terribly right she was.

“It’s harder for us both, that you’ve been here and this has happened,” she said.  “Harder!  But better!  Neither of us, for each other’s sake, can have any more cheap thrills, slothful moments, thoughts without courage.  Oh good-bye.”