But immediately she began to retract.

‘He insists on my accepting God knows what in HIM,’ she resumed. ‘He wants me to accept HIM as—as an absolute—But it seems to me he doesn’t want to GIVE anything. He doesn’t want real warm intimacy—he won’t have it—he rejects it. He won’t let me think, really, and he won’t let me FEEL—he hates feelings.’

There was a long pause, bitter for Hermione. Ah, if only he would have made this demand of her? Her he DROVE into thought, drove inexorably into knowledge—and then execrated her for it.

‘He wants me to sink myself,’ Ursula resumed, ‘not to have any being of my own—’

‘Then why doesn’t he marry an odalisk?’ said Hermione in her mild sing–song, ‘if it is that he wants.’ Her long face looked sardonic and amused.

‘Yes,’ said Ursula vaguely. After all, the tiresome thing was, he did not want an odalisk, he did not want a slave. Hermione would have been his slave—there was in her a horrible desire to prostrate herself before a man—a man who worshipped her, however, and admitted her as the supreme thing. He did not want an odalisk. He wanted a woman to TAKE something from him, to give herself up so much that she could take the last realities of him, the last facts, the last physical facts, physical and unbearable.

And if she did, would he acknowledge her? Would he be able to acknowledge her through everything, or would he use use her just as his instrument, use her for his own private satisfaction, not admitting her? That was what the other men had done. They had wanted their own show, and they would not admit her, they turned all she was into nothingness. Just as Hermione now betrayed herself as a woman. Hermione was like a man, she believed only in men’s things. She betrayed the woman in herself. And Birkin, would he acknowledge, or would he deny her?

‘Yes,’ said Hermione, as each woman came out of her own separate reverie. ‘It would be a mistake—I think it would be a mistake—’

‘To marry him?’ asked Ursula.

‘Yes,’ said Hermione slowly—‘I think you need a man—soldierly, strong–willed—’ Hermione held out her hand and clenched it with rhapsodic intensity. ‘You should have a man like the old heroes—you need to stand behind him as he goes into battle, you need to SEE his strength, and to HEAR his shout—. You need a man physically strong, and virile in his will, NOT a sensitive man—.’ There was a break, as if the pythoness had uttered the oracle, and now the woman went on, in a rhapsody–wearied voice: ‘And you see, Rupert isn’t this, he isn’t. He is frail in health and body, he needs great, great care. Then he is so changeable and unsure of himself—it requires the greatest patience and understanding to help him. And I don’t think you are patient. You would have to be prepared to suffer—dreadfully. I can’t TELL you how much suffering it would take to make him happy. He lives an INTENSELY spiritual life, at times—too, too wonderful. And then come the reactions. I can’t speak of what I have been through with him. We have been together so long, I really do know him, I DO know what he is. And I feel I must say it; I feel it would be perfectly DISASTROUS for you to marry him—for you even more than for him.’ Hermione lapsed into bitter reverie. ‘He is so uncertain, so unstable—he wearies, and then reacts. I couldn’t TELL you what his re–actions are. I couldn’t TELL you the agony of them. That which he affirms and loves one day—a little latter he turns on it in a fury of destruction. He is never constant, always this awful, dreadful reaction. Always the quick change from good to bad, bad to good. And nothing is so devastating, nothing—’

Mr. Gregson, who had listened to this address with considerable impatience, could contain himself no longer. “Look here, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” he said, “we are all ready to acknowledge that you are a smart man, and that you have your own methods of working. We want something more than mere theory and preaching now, though. It is a case of taking the man. I have made my case out, and it seems I was wrong. Young Charpentier could not have been engaged in this second affair. Lestrade went after his man, Stangerson, and it appears that he was wrong too. You have thrown out hints here, and hints there, and seem to know more than we do, but the time has come when we feel that we have a right to ask you straight how much you do know of the business. Can you name the man who did it?”

“I cannot help feeling that Gregson is right, sir,” remarked Lestrade. “We have both tried, and we have both failed. You have remarked more than once since I have been in the room that you had all the evidence which you require. Surely you will not withhold it any longer.”

“Any delay in arresting the assassin,” I observed, “might give him time to perpetrate some fresh atrocity.”

Thus pressed by us all, Holmes showed signs of irresolution. He continued to walk up and down the room with his head sunk on his chest and his brows drawn down, as was his habit when lost in thought.

“There will be no more murders,” he said at last, stopping abruptly and facing us. “You can put that consideration out of the question. You have asked me if I know the name of the assassin. I do. The mere knowing of his name is a small thing, however, compared with the power of laying our hands upon him. This I expect very shortly to do. I have good hopes of managing it through my own arrangements; but it is a thing which needs delicate handling, for we have a shrewd and desperate man to deal with, who is supported, as I have had occasion to prove, by another who is as clever as himself. As long as this man has no idea that anyone can have a clue there is some chance of securing him- but if he had the slightest suspicion, he would change his name, and vanish in an instant among the four million inhabitants of this great city. Without meaning to hurt either of your feelings, I am bound to say that T consider these men to be more than a match for the official force, and that is why I have not asked your assistance. If I fail, I shall, of course, incur all the blame due to this omission; but that I am prepared for. At present I am ready to promise that the instant that I can communicate with you without endangering my own combinations, I shall do so.”

Gregson and Lestrade seemed to be far from satisfied by this assurance, or by the depreciating allusion to the detective police. The former had flushed up to the roots of his flaxen hair, while the other’s beady eyes glistened with curiosity and resentment. Neither of them had time to speak, however, before there was a tap at the door, and the spokesman of the street Arabs, young Wiggins, introduced his insignificant and unsavoury person.