"As for that evening when I stood in the hallway, with the light of that lamp shining on me and with my friend looking and wondering what was the matter that, after all, is what I must try to tell you about."

He was partially dressed now and again Jane was sitting upright on the bed. He came to sit in his shirt sleeves beside her. Long afterward she remembered how extraordinarily young he looked at that moment. He seemed intent on making her understand fully everything that had happened. "Well, you understand." he said slowly, "that, although she had seen my friend and his sister before, she had never seen me. At the same time she knew I was to stay in the house during her visit. No doubt she had been having thoughts about the strange young man she was to meet and it is also true I had been having thoughts about her.

"Even at the moment when I walked, thus nude, into her presence she was a living thing in my mind. And when she came up to me, out of sleep you see, before she had time to think, I was a living thing to her then. What living things we were to each other we dared understand but for a moment. I know that now, but for many years after that happened I didn't know and was only confused.

"I was confused also when I came out into the hallway and stood before my friend. You understand that he did not yet know she was in the house. I had to tell him something and it was like having to tell in some public way the secret of what happens between two people in a moment of love.

"It can't be done, you understand, and so there I stood stammering and making things worse every minute. I must have had a guilty look on my face and right away I began to feel guilty, although when I was in that room standing by the bed, as I have explained, I didn't feel guilty at all, quite the contrary in fact.

' 'I went naked into that room and stood beside the bed and that woman is in there now, all naked,' I said.

"My friend was of course amazed. 'What woman?' he asked.

"I tried to explain. 'Your sister's friend. She is in there naked on the bed and I went in and stood beside her. She came on the train at noon,' I said.

"You see, I appeared to know all about everything. I felt guilty. That was what was the matter with me. I suppose I stammered and acted confused. 'He'll never believe it was an accident now. He'll think I am up to something strange,' I thought immediately. Whether he ever had all or any of the thoughts that went through my mind at that moment and of which I was in a way accusing him I never found out. I was always a stranger in that house after that moment. You see, what I had done, to have been made quite clear would have required a good deal of whispered explanation that I never offered and, even after your mother and I were married, things were never as they had been between me and my friend.