their attempts to touch her—doubt, fear, moodiness, care, shame. She knew that they were waiting like wolves just outside the circumscribing light, but she had long spells of power to keep them in hungry subjection there.
A spiritual forgetfulness coexisted with an intellectual remembrance. She walked in brightness, but she knew that in the background those shapes of darkness were always spread. They might be receding, or they might be approaching, one or the other, a little every day.
One evening Tess and Clare were obliged to sit indoors keeping house, all the other occupants of the domicile being away. As they talked she looked thoughtfully up at him, and met his two appreciative eyes.
“I am not worthy of you—no, I am not!” she burst out, jumping up from her low stool as though appalled at his homage, and the fullness of her own joy thereat.
Clare, deeming the whole basis of her excitement to be that which was only the