Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 5.pdf/469

Rh "What things unseen?"

My cousin shrugged his shoulders. "Something we never find in life," he said. "Something we are always seeking."

"But what?" she asked.

Melville made no reply. She scrutinised his face for a time, and then looked out at the sunlight again.

"Do you want him back?" he said.

"I don't know."

"Do you want him back?"

"I feel as if I had never wanted him before."

"And now?"

"Yes But—if he will not come back?"

"He will not come back," said Melville, "for the work."

"I know."

"He will not come back for his self-respect—or any of those things."

"No."

"Those things, you know, are only fainter dreams. All the palace you have made for him is a dream. But"

"Yes?"

"He might come back—" he said, and looked at her and stopped. He tells me he had some vague intention of startling her, rousing her, wounding her, to some display of romantic force, some insurgence of passion, that might yet win Chatteris back, and then in that moment, and like a blow, it came to him how foolish such a fancy had been. There she stood impenetrably herself, limitedly intelligent, well-meaning, imitative, and powerless. Her pose,