He looked at her again. She saw that he was at the mercy of his moment, and of hers.
For it was her moment. There was a power that every woman had, if she cared to use it and knew how. There was a charm that had nothing to do with beauty, for it was present in the unbeautiful. These things had their life secret and apart from every other charm and every other power. His senses called to the unknown and unacknowledged sense in her. She knew that he could be hers if she answered to that call. She had only to kindle her flame, send out her signal.
And she said to herself, "I can't. I can't take him like this. He isn't himself. It would be hateful of me."
In that moment she had no fear. Love held her back and burning honour that hardly knew itself from shame. It accused her of having man[oe]uvred for that moment. It said, "You can't let him come in like this and trap him."
Another voice in her whispered, "You fool. If you don't marry him some other woman will—in this mood of his." And honour cried, answering it, "Let her. So long as it isn't I."
She had a torturing sense of his presence. And with it her fear came back to her, and she rose suddenly to her feet, and stood apart from him.
He flung the manuscript into the place she had left, and bowed forward, hiding his face in his hands. He rose too, and she knew that his moment had gone. She had let it go.
Then, with a foreboding of his departure, she tried to call him back to her, not in his way, but her own, the way of the heart.
"Do you know what I should like to do?" she said. "I should like to sweep it all away, and to get back to that little room, and for nobody to come near me but you, nobody to read me but you, nobody to talk about me but you. Do you remember?"
He did, but he was not going to talk about it. In the fierceness of his mortal moment he was impatient of everything that for her held immorality.