Page:The Prussian officer, and other stories, Lawrence, 1914.djvu/181

 black, straight, glossy hair was brushed clean back from his brow. His black eyes were watching her, and his face, that was clear and cream, and perfectly smooth, was flickering.

“We are very different,” she said bitterly.

Again he laughed.

“I see you disapprove of me,” he said.

“I disapprove of what you have become,” she said.

“You think we might”— he glanced at the hut—“have been like this—you and I?”

She shook her head.

“You! no; never! You plucked a thing and looked at it till you had found out all you wanted to know about it, then you threw it away,” she said,

“Did I?” he asked. “And could your way never have been my way? I suppose not.”

“Why should it?” she said. “I am a separate being.”

“But surely two people sometimes go the same way,” he said.

“You took me away from myself,” she said.

He knew he had mistaken her, had taken her for something she was not. That was his fault, not hers.

“And did you always know?” he asked.

“No—you never let me know. You bullied me. I couldn’t help myself. I was glad when you left me, really.”

“I know you were,” he said. But his face went paler, almost deathly luminous.

“Yet,” he said, “it was you who sent me the way I have gone.”

“I!” she exclaimed, in pride.