II
All night long he lay sweating with horror at what he had done. The idea that he had taken a positive step was a terror to him, but directly he thought of Stella he was helpless. Her charm oozed over him, made him glow, stiffen into an unwonted and intoxicating virility which collapsed at the most inconvenient moments, just, for instance, when he saw himself as heroic, making a career for himself for her sake, or writing that comic book he had often thought of to make her laugh. Not a wink of sleep did he get all night, and he thought, as the greyest of grey dawns came slinking up the sky:
"This is going to be horrible, horrible."
He felt that he had not a friend in the world. Not the slightest desire did he have to get up and face a new day. Once he was with Stella he knew that he would be safe. She was so strong, so vividly alive, so quick, but he would have to see her at breakfast with other people and after breakfast, some time or other, he would have to tell them. And then of course Stella had a father and mother: and brothers no doubt, brilliant fellows, who did things and understood everything that was going on around them: sisters possibly, like Stella but different, with cleverness instead of knowledge. Astounding how easy it was to construct a whole family out of Stella.
At last, gloomily staring out of the window, Digby reached the conclusion:
"I wish I wasn't such a damn fool."
That was the best he could do in the circumstances, and it was enough to get him out of bed and downstairs without further tremor.
Stella had been up for hours. She was waiting for him downstairs with a basket of mushrooms.
"You like them, don't you?" she said. "I'm not going to let anybody else eat them."
Her charm this morning was cool and dewy and less than ever could Digby resist it.
"I didn't expect," he said, "I didn't expect you to begin at once to think of feeding me."
"That is the very first thing I thought of when I woke up," she re-
