It was a great effort to him to maintain this conversation, and to press for the thing he wanted from her, the surrender of her spirit.

`It is different,' he said. `The two kinds of service are so different. I serve you in another way -- not through yourself -- somewhere else. But I want us to be together without bothering about ourselves -- to be really together because we are together, as if it were a phenomenon, not a not a thing we have to maintain by our own effort.'

`No,' she said, pondering. `You are just egocentric. You never have any enthusiasm, you never come out with any spark towards me. You want yourself, really, and your own affairs. And you want me just to be there, to serve you.'

But this only made him shut off from her.

`Ah well,' he said, `words make no matter, any way. The thing is between us, or it isn't.'

`You don't even love me,' she cried.

`I do,' he said angrily. `But I want --' His mind saw again the lovely golden light of spring transfused through her eyes, as through some wonderful window. And he wanted her to be with him there, in this world of proud indifference. But what was the good of telling her he wanted this company in proud indifference. What was the good of talking, any way? It must happen beyond the sound of words. It was merely ruinous to try to work her by conviction. This was a paradisal bird that could never be netted, it must fly by itself to the heart.

`I always think I am going to be loved -- and then I am let down. You don't love me, you know. You don't want to serve me. You only want yourself.'

A shiver of rage went over his veins, at this repeated: `You don't want to serve me.' All the paradisal disappeared from him.

`No,' he said, irritated, `I don't want to serve you, because there is nothing there to serve. What you want me to serve, is nothing, mere nothing. It isn't even you, it is your mere female quality. And I wouldn't give a straw for your female ego -- it's a rag doll.'

`Ha!' she laughed in mockery. `That's all you think of me, is it? And then you have the impudence to say you love me.'

She rose in anger, to go home.

You want the paradisal unknowing,' she said, turning round on him as he still sat half-visible in the shadow. `I know what that means, thank you. You want me to be your thing, never to criticise you or to have anything to say for myself. You want me to be a mere thing for you! No thank you! If you want that, there are plenty of women who will give it to you. There are plenty of women who will lie down for you to walk over them -- go to them then, if that's what you want -- go to them.'

`No,' he said, outspoken with anger. `I want you to drop your assertive will, your frightened apprehensive self-insistence, that is what I want. I want you to trust yourself so implicitly, that you can let yourself go.'

`Let myself go!' she re-echoed in mockery. `I can let myself go, easily enough. It is you who can't let yourself go, it is you who hang on to yourself as if it were your only treasure. You -- you are the Sunday school teacher -- You -- you preacher.'

The amount of truth that was in this made him stiff and unheeding of her.