more baffled and maddened, poor thing. He, the higher, the finer, in his
way the stronger, played with his garden, and his old folk-songs and
Morris-dances, just played, and let her support the pillars of the future
on her own heart.

And he began to get bitter, and a wicked look began to come on his face.
He did not give in to her; not he. There were seven devils inside his
long, slim, white body. He was healthy, full of restrained life. Yes,
even he himself had to lock up his own vivid life inside himself, now she
would not take it from him. Or rather, now that she only took it
occasionally. For she had to yield at times. She loved him so, she
desired him so, he was so exquisite to her, the fine creature that he
was, finer than herself. Yes, with a groan she had to give in to her own
unquenched passion for him. And he came to her then--ah, terrible, ah,
wonderful, sometimes she wondered how either of them could live after the
terror of the passion that swept between them. It was to her as if pure
lightning, flash after flash, went through every fibre of her, till
extinction came.

But it is the fate of human beings to live on. And it is the fate of
clouds that seem nothing but bits of vapour slowly to pile up, to pile up
and fill the heavens and blacken the sun entirely.

So it was. The love came back, the lightning of passion flashed
tremendously between them. And there was blue sky and gorgeousness for a
little while. And then, as inevitably, as inevitably, slowly the clouds
began to edge up again above the horizon, slowly, slowly to lurk about
the heavens, throwing an occasional cold and hateful shadow: slowly,
slowly to congregate, to fill the empyrean space.