face, the candid brow, the pure eyes? What did she think during all
these years? What did she think yesterday--to-day; what would she

think to-morrow? He must find out. . . . And yet how could he get to
know? She had been false to him, to that man, to herself; she was

ready to be false--for him. Always false. She looked lies, breathed
lies, lived lies--would tell lies--always--to the end of life! And he

would never know what she meant. Never! Never! No one could.
Impossible to know.

He dropped his knife and fork, brusquely, as though by the virtue of a
sudden illumination he had been made aware of poison in his plate, and

became positive in his mind that he could never swallow another morsel
of food as long as he lived. The dinner went on in a room that had

been steadily growing, from some cause, hotter than a furnace. He had
to drink. He drank time after time, and, at last, recollecting

himself, was frightened at the quantity, till he perceived that what
he had been drinking was water--out of two different wine glasses; and

the discovered unconsciousness of his actions affected him painfully.
He was disturbed to find himself in such an unhealthy state of mind.

Excess of feeling--excess of feeling; and it was part of his creed
that any excess of feeling was unhealthy--morally unprofitable; a

taint on practical manhood. Her fault. Entirely her fault. Her sinful
self-forgetfulness was contagious. It made him think thoughts he had

never had before; thoughts disintegrating, tormenting, sapping to the
very core of life--like mortal disease; thoughts that bred the fear of

air, of sunshine, of men--like the whispered news of a pestilence.
The maids served without noise; and to avoid looking at his wife and

looking within himself, he followed with his eyes first one and then
the other without being able to distinguish between them. They moved

silently about, without one being able to see by what means, for their
skirts touched the carpet all round; they glided here and there,

receded, approached, rigid in black and white, with precisegestures,
and no life in their faces, like a pair of marionettes in mourning;

and their air of wooden unconcern struck him as unnatural, suspicious,
irremediably hostile. That such people's feelings or judgment could

affect one in any way, had never occurred to him before. He understood
they had no prospects, no principles--no refinement and no power. But

now he had become so debased that he could not even attempt to
disguise from himself his yearning to know the secret thoughts of his

servants. Several times he looked up covertly at the faces of those
girls. Impossible to know. They changed his plates and utterly ignored

his existence. What impenetrable duplicity. Women--nothing but women
round him. Impossible to know. He experienced that heart-probing,

fiery sense of dangerous loneliness, which sometimes assails the
courage of a solitaryadventurer in an unexplored country. The sight

of a man's face--he felt--of any man's face, would have been a
profoundrelief. One would know then--something--could understand.

. . . He would engage a butler as soon as possible. And then the end
of that dinner--which had seemed to have been going on for hours--the

end came, taking him violently by surprise, as though he had expected
in the natural course of events to sit at that table for ever and

ever.
But upstairs in the drawing-room he became the victim of a restless

fate, that would, on no account, permit him to sit down. She had sunk
on a low easy-chair, and taking up from a small table at her elbow a

fan with ivory leaves, shaded her face from the fire. The coals glowed
without a flame; and upon the red glow the vertical bars of the grate

stood out at her feet, black and curved, like the charred ribs of a
consumed sacrifice. Far off, a lamp perched on a slim brass rod,

burned under a wide shade of crimson silk: the centre, within the
shadows of the large room, of a fiery twilight that had in the warm

quality of its tint something delicate, refined and infernal. His soft
footfalls and the subdued beat of the clock on the high mantel-piece

answered each other regularly--as if time and himself, engaged in a
measured contest, had been pacing together through the infernal

delicacy of twilight towards a mysterious goal.
He walked from one end of the room to the other without a pause, like

a traveller who, at night, hastens doggedly upon an interminable
journey. Now and then he glanced at her. Impossible to know. The gross

precision of that thought expressed to his practical mind something
illimitable and infinitely" target="_blank" title="ad.无限地；无穷地">infinitelyprofound, the all-embracing subtlety of a

feeling, the eternalorigin of his pain. This woman had accepted him,
had abandoned him--had returned to him. And of all this he would never

know the truth. Never. Not till death--not after--not on judgment day
when all shall be disclosed, thoughts and deeds, rewards and

punishments, but the secret of hearts alone shall return, forever
unknown, to the Inscrutable Creator of good and evil, to the Master of

doubts and impulses.
He stood still to look at her. Thrown back and with her face turned

away from him, she did not stir--as if asleep. What did she think?
What did she feel? And in the presence of her perfect stillness, in

the breathless" target="_blank" title="a.屏息的">breathless silence, he felt himself insignificant and powerless
before her, like a prisoner in chains. The fury of his impotence

called out sinister images, that faculty of tormenting vision, which
in a moment of anguishing sense of wrong induces a man to mutter

threats or make a menacing gesture in the solitude of an empty room.
But the gust of passion passed at once, left him trembling a little,

with the wondering, reflective fear of a man who has paused on the
very verge of suicide. The serenity of truth and the peace of death

can be only secured through a largeness of contempt embracing all the
profitable servitudes of life. He found he did not want to know.

Better not. It was all over. It was as if it hadn't been. And it was
very necessary for both of them, it was morally right, that nobody

should know.
He spoke suddenly, as if concluding a discussion.

"The best thing for us is to forget all this."
She started a little and shut the fan with a click.

"Yes, forgive--and forget," he repeated, as if to himself.
"I'll never forget," she said in a vibrating voice. "And I'll never

forgive myself. . . ."
"But I, who have nothing to reproach myself . . ." He began, making a

step towards her. She jumped up.
"I did not come back for your forgiveness," she exclaimed,

passionately, as if clamouring against an unjust aspersion.
He only said "oh!" and became silent. He could not understand this

unprovoked aggressiveness of her attitude, and certainly was very far
from thinking that an unpremeditated hint of something resembling

emotion in the tone of his last words had caused that uncontrollable
burst of sincerity. It completed his bewilderment, but he was not at

all angry now. He was as if benumbed by the fascination of the
incomprehensible. She stood before him, tall and indistinct, like a

black phantom in the red twilight. At last poignantly uncertain as to
what would happen if he opened his lips, he muttered:

"But if my love is strong enough . . ." and hesitated.
He heard something snap loudly in the fiery stillness. She had broken

her fan. Two thin pieces of ivory fell, one after another, without a
sound, on the thick carpet, and instinctively" target="_blank" title="ad.本能地">instinctively he stooped to pick them

up. While he groped at her feet it occurred to him that the woman
there had in her hands an indispensable gift which nothing else on

earth could give; and when he stood up he was penetrated by an
irresistible belief in an enigma, by the conviction that within his

reach and passing away from him was the very secret of existence--its
certitude, immaterial and precious! She moved to the door, and he

followed at her elbow, casting about for a magic word that would make
the enigma clear, that would compel the surrender of the gift. And

there is no such word! The enigma is only made clear by sacrifice, and
the gift of heaven is in the hands of every man. But they had lived in

a world that abhors enigmas, and cares for no gifts but such as can be
obtained in the street. She was nearing the door. He said hurriedly:

"'Pon my word, I loved you--I love you now."
She stopped for an almost imperceptible moment to give him an

indignant glance, and then moved on. That feminine penetration--so
clever and so tainted by the eternalinstinct of self-defence, so

ready to see an obvious evil in everything it cannot
understand--filled her with bitter resentment against both the men who

could offer to the spiritual and tragicstrife of her feelings
nothing but the coarseness of their abominable materialism. In her

anger against her own ineffectual self-deception she found hate enough
for them both. What did they want? What more did this one want? And as