-you--you as you stood in
the chalet at night looking through the open window, with the
candle-light striking upward on your face, and with your reluctant smile
upon your lips--you as you lay on the top of the Aiguille d'Argentiere
with the wonder of a new world in your eyes--you as you said good-by in
the sunset and went down the winding path to the forest. If you only
knew, Sylvia!"

"Yes, but I don't know," she answered, and now she looked at him. "I
suppose that, if I loved, I should know, I should understand."

Her hands lay in his, listless and unresponsive to the pressure of his.
She spoke slowly and thoughtfully, meeting his gaze with troubled eyes.

"Yet you were glad to see me when I came," he urged.

"Glad, yes! You are my friend, my one friend. I was very glad. But the
gladness passed. When you asked me to come with you across the garden, I
was wanting you to go away."

The words hurt him. They could not but hurt him. But she was so plainly
unconscious of offence, she was so plainly trying to straighten out her
own tangled position, that he could feel no anger.

"Why?" he asked; and again she frankly answered him.

"I was humbled," she replied, "and I have had so much humiliation
in my life."

The very quietude of her voice and the wistful look upon the young tired
face hurt him far more than her words had done.

"Sylvia," he cried, and he drew her toward him. "Come with me now! My
dear, there will be an end of all humiliation. We can be married, we can
go down to my home on the Sussex Downs. That old house needs a mistress,
Sylvia. It is very lonely." He drew a breath and smiled suddenly. "And I
would like so much to show you it, to show you all the corners, the
bridle-paths across the downs, the woods, and the wide view from Arundel
to Chichester spires. Sylvia, come!"

Just for a moment it seemed that she leaned toward him. He put his arm
about her and held her for a moment closer. But her head was lowered, not
lifted up to his; and then she freed herself gently from his clasp.

She faced him with a little wrinkle of thought between her brows and
spoke with an air of wisdom which went very prettily with the childlike
beauty of her face.

"You are my friend," she said, "a friend I am very grateful for, but you
are not more than that to me. I am frank. You see, I am thinking now of
reasons which would not trouble me if I loved you. Marriage with me would
do you no good, would hurt you in your