hear, only this. Yet now she heard it, heard the strange clapping vibration of truth in his voice as he said it, she could not believe. She could not believe — she did not believe. Yet she believed, triumphantly, with fatal exultance.

‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Why don’t you believe it? It’s true. It is true, as we stand at this moment — ’ he stood still with her in the wind; ‘I care for nothing on earth, or in heaven, outside this spot where we are. And it isn’t my own presence I care about, it is all yours. I’d sell my soul a hundred times — but I couldn’t bear not to have you here. I couldn’t bear to be alone. My brain would burst. It is true.’ He drew her closer to him, with definite movement.

‘No,’