attraction for you, or my hold over you, and then you——?”
He did not finish. She made the same grievous murmuring noise over him.
“It shall not be any more,” she said.
“All right,” he replied, “since you decide it.”
She clasped him round the chest and fondled him, distracted with pity.
“You mustn’t be bitter,” she murmured.
“Four days is enough,” he said. “In a fortnight I should be intolerable to you. I am not masterful.”
“It is not so, Siegmund,” she said sharply.
“I give way always,” he repeated. “And then—to-night!”
“To-night, to-night!” she cried in wrath. “To-night I have been a fool!”
“And I?” he asked.
“You—what of you?” she cried. Then she became sad. “I have little perverse feelings,” she lamented.
“And I can’t bear to compel anything, for fear of hurting it. So I’m always pushed this way and that, like a fool.”
“You don’t know how you hurt me, talking so,” she said.
He kissed her. After a moment he said :
“You are not like other folk. ‘Ihr Lascheks seid ein anderes Geschlecht.’ I thought of you when we read it.”
“Would you rather have me more like the rest, or more unlike, Siegmund? Which is it?”
“Neither,” he said. “You are you.”
They were quiet for a space. The only movement in the night was the faint gambolling of starlight on
