"Owen—does it never occur to you that any human being can be of use?"
"No." He considered the point. "No, I can't say it ever does."
He stood before her, wrapped in his dream, removed from her, utterly forgetful.
She had her moment of pain in contemplating him. He saw it in her face, and as it were came back to her.
"Don't imagine," he said, "that I don't know what you've done. Now that I do know you."
She turned, almost in anger. "I've done nothing. You don't know me." She added, "I am going to write to Jane Holland."
When he had left her she sat a long while by the window, brooding on the thing that had happened to her a second time.
She had fallen in love; fallen with the fatality of the Lemprieres, and with the fine precipitate sweep of her own genius. And she had let herself go, with the recklessness of a woman unaware of her genius for loving, with the superb innocence, too, of all spontaneous forces. Owen's nature had disarmed her of all subterfuges, all ordinary defences of her sex. They were absurd in dealing with a creature so remote and disembodied.
She knew that in his way, his remote and disembodied way, he cared for her. She knew that in whatever place he held her she was alone there. She was the only woman for whom as yet he had cared. His way was not Tanqueray's way. It was a way that kept her safe. She had sworn that there were to be no more George Tanquerays; and there were none. She had done with that.
Not but that she was afraid of Owen. She had taken possession of him in fear, a secret, unallowed possession, a holding with hands invisible, intangible. For she had wisdom, the sad wisdom of the frustrate; it, and the insight of her genius, told her that Owen would not endure a tie less spiritual than friendship. She knew George Tanqueray's opinion of her. He was justified.