needed. He would add more, and what he added marred the
whole gift for Sylvia. She shook her head, and looking at him with a sad
and gentle smile, said:

"Love is for the happy people."

"That is a hard saying, Sylvia," Chayne returned, "and not a true one."

"True to me," said Sylvia, with a deep conviction, and as he advanced to
her she raised her hand to keep him off. "No, no," she cried, and had he
listened, he might have heard a hint of exasperation in her voice. But he
would not be warned.

"You can't go on, living here, without sympathy, without love, without
even kindness. Already it is evident. You are ill, and tired. And you
think to go on all your life or all your father's life. Sylvia, let me
take you away!"

And each unwise word set him further and further from his aim. It seemed
to her that there was no help anywhere. Chayne in front of her seemed to
her almost as much her enemy as her father, who paced the lawn behind her
arm in arm with Walter Hine. She clasped her hands together with a quick
sharp movement.

"I will not let you take me away," she cried. "For I do not love you";
and her voice had lost its gentleness and grown cold and hard. Chayne
began again, but whether it was with a renewal of his plea, she did not
hear. For she broke in upon him quickly:

"Please, let me finish. I am, as you said, a little over-wrought! Just
hear me out and leave me to bear my troubles by myself. You will make it
easier for me"; she saw that the words hurt her lover. But she did not
modify them. She was in the mood to hurt. She had been betrayed by her
need of sympathy into speaking words which she would gladly have
recalled; she had been caught off her guard and almost unawares; and she
resented it. Chayne had told her that she looked ill and tired; and she
resented that too. No wonder she looked tired when she had her father
with his secret treacheries on one side and an importunate lover upon
the other! She thought for a moment or two how best to put what she had
still to stay:

"I have probably said to you," she resumed, "more than was right or
fair--I mean fair to my father. I have no doubt exaggerated things. I
want you to forget what I have said. For it led you into a mistake."

Chayne looked at her in perplexity.

"A mistake?"

"Yes," she answered. She was standing in front of him with her forehead
wrinkled and a somber, angry look in her eyes. "A mistake which I must
correct. You said that I wa