question, he would instantly have said ' Yes '; but with the growth of his capacity for happiness and for loving her had grown the demand for happiness and love which his nature made. Instead of acquiescing in the conclusion that he never again could possibly love as he had once loved, he had begun to want that again; he was no longer content with this limitation.
' Ah, my dearest,' he said, ' happiness is not in your power or mine. No, I am not quite happy; I want something more.'
He sat up as her eyes questioned him.
' I want the impossible, I suppose,' he said; ' I want to be fire. You have made me want that.'
For a moment some shadow of vague trouble crossed her eyes.
' I don't think I understand,' she said.
Bertie plucked a long feather of grass, and chewed the juicy end of it. He had not meant to say quite so much.
' I'm not sure that I understand either,' he said. ' It is quite easy to understand complicated things, but when one gets to the plain, simple things like love and death, then one realizes how little one understands. Is it not so?'
The trouble grew.
' I never ask for confidences,' she said, ' so you mustn't think I am doing so; but, Bertie, sometimes I feel that there is a piece of you which I do not know—some locked room, or—or it is like that haunted house we went to the other day, where there is a space unaccounted for. One goes into all the rooms, but by the measurements there is yet another room which one cannot find.'
The intuition of this rather startled and shocked him.
' So you credit me with a Bluebeard's chamber?' he asked. ' It is far more likely to be a cupboard for lumber.'
' Have you some lumber, then?' she asked quickly.
The bitter taste of that which had been exquisitely sweet
