`But you needn't be troubled by any responsibility. Clifford would have it as his own, he'd be glad.'

She saw him go pale, and recoil under this. He did not answer.

`Shall I go back to Clifford and put a little baronet into Wragby?' she asked.

He looked at her, pale and very remote. The ugly little grin flickered on his face.

`You wouldn't have to tell him who the father was?'

`Oh!' she said; `he'd take it even then, if I wanted him to.'

He thought for a time.

`Ay!' he said at last, to himself. `I suppose he would.'

There was silence. A big gulf was between them.

`But you don't want me to go back to Clifford, do you?' she asked him.

`What do you want yourself?' he replied.

`I want to live with you,' she said simply.

In spite of himself, little flames ran over his belly as he heard her say it, and he dropped his head. Then he looked up at her again, with those haunted eyes.

`If it's worth it to you,' he said. `I've got nothing.'

`You've got more than most men. Come, you know it,' she said.

`In one way, I know it.' He was silent for a time, thinking. Then he resumed: `They used to say I had too much of the woman in me. But it's not that. I'm not a woman not because I don't want to shoot birds, neither because I don't want to make money, or get on. I could have got on in the army, easily, but I didn't like the army. Though I could manage the men all right: they liked me and they had a bit of a holy fear of me when I got mad. No, it was stupid, dead-handed higher authority that made the army dead: absolutely fool-dead. I like men, and men like me. But I can't stand the twaddling bossy impudence of the people who run this world. That's why I can't get on. I hate the impudence of money, and I hate the impudence of class. So in the world as it is, what have I to offer a woman?'

`But why offer anything? It's not a bargain. It's just that we love one another,' she said.

`Nay, nay! It's more than that. Living is moving and moving on. My life won't go down the proper gutters, it just won't. So I'm a bit of a waste ticket by myself. And I've no business to take a woman into my life, unless my life does something and gets somewhere, inwardly at least, to keep us both fresh. A man must offer a woman some meaning in his life, if it's going to be an isolated life, and if she's a genuine woman. I can't be just your male concubine.'

`Why not?' she said.

`Why, because I can't. And you would soon hate it.'

`As if you couldn't trust me,' she said.

The grin flickered on his face.