s, and
restrained!"

It was as if she had not spoken. Cardiff stared with knit
brows into the insoluble problem she had presented to
him a moment longer. "_How_ are we so different, Elfrida?"
he broke out passionately. "You are a woman and I am a
man; the world has dealt with us, educated us, differently,
and I am older than I dare say I ought to be to hope for
your love. But these are not differences that count,
whatever their results may be. It seems to me trivial to
speak of such things in this connection, but we like very
much the same books, the same people. I grant you I don't
know anything about pictures; but surely," he pleaded,
"these are not the things that cut a man off from the
happiness of a lifetime!"

"I'm afraid--" she began, and then she broke off suddenly.
"I _am_ sorry--sorrier than I have ever been before, I
think. I should have liked so well to keep your friendship;
it is the most chivalrous I know. But if you feel like--like
this about it I suppose I must not. Shall we say good-by
here and now? Truly I am sorry."

She had risen, and he could find no words to stay her.
It seemed that the battle to possess her was over, and
that he, had lost. Her desire for his friendship had all
the mockery of freedom in it to him--in the agony of the
moment it insulted him. With an effort he controlled
himself--there should be no more of the futility of words.
He must see the last of her some time--let it be now,
then. He bent his head over the slender hand he held,
brought his lips to it, and then, with sudden passion,
kissed it hotly again and again, seeking the warm,
uncovered little spot above the fastening. Elfrida snatched
it away with a little shiver at the contact, a little
angry shiver of surprised nerves. He looked at her
piteously, struggling for a word, for any word to send
away her repulsion, to bring her back to the mood of the
moment before. But he could not find it; he seemed to
have drifted hopelessly from her, to have lost all his
reckonings.

"Well?" she said. She was held there partly by her sense
of pity and partly by her desire to see the last, the
very last of it.

"Go!" he returned, with a shrinking of pain at the word,
"I cannot."

"_Pauvre ami!_" she said softly, and then she turned,
and her light steps sounded back to him through the length
of the hall.

She walked more slowly when she reached the pavement
outside, and one who met her might have thought she
indulged in