was you who definitely cut me off from my past. I might have been
gadding about safely with Sarah Churcher and her lot at this very
hour, but you would have it otherwise, and so I finished up with
neurasthenia. You commanded and I obeyed."

"Well," he said, ignoring all her utterance except the last words,
"obey me again."

"What do you want me to do?" she demanded wistfully and yet defiantly.
Her features were tending to disappear in the tide of night, but she
happened to sit up and lean forward and bring them a little closer to
him. "You've no right to stop me from doing what I want to do. What
right have you to stop me? Besides, you can't stop me. Nothing can
stop me. It is settled. Everything is arranged."

He, too, sat up and leaned forward. In a voice rendered soft by the
realisation of the fact that he had indeed known her before Carlos
Smith knew her and had imagined himself once to be in love with her,
and of the harshness of her destiny and the fading of her glory, he
said simply and yet, in spite of himself, insinuatingly:

"No! I don't claim any right to stop you. I understand better,
perhaps, than you think. But let me come down again next week-end. Do
let me," he insisted, still more softly.

Even while he was speaking he expected her to say, "You're only
suggesting that in order to gain time."

But she said: