the band was playing
passionate love-music with sobs and sad ecstasies of farewell embraces
in it. He kissed her, then drew back. "No," he groaned. "Those lips
are not for me, accursed that I am."

She was no longer looking at him, but sat gazing straight ahead, her
shoulders bent as if she were crouching to receive a blow. He began in
a low voice, and, as he spoke, it rose or fell as his words and the
distant music prompted him. "Mine has been a luckless life," he said.
"I have been a football of destiny, kicked and flung about, hither and
yon. Again and again I have thought in my despair to lay me down and
die. But something has urged me on, on, on. And at last I met you."

He paused and groaned--partly because it was the proper place, partly
with vexation. Here was a speech to thrill, yet she sat there inert,
her face a stupid blank. He was not even sure that she had heard.

"Are you listening?" he asked in a stern aside, a curious mingling of
the actor and the stage manager.

"I--I don't know," she answered, startling. "I feel so--so--queer. I
don't seem to be able to pay attention." She looked at him timidly and
her chin quivered. "Don't you love me any more?"

"Love you? Would that I did not! But I must on--my time is short.
How can you say I do not love you when my soul is like a raging fire?"

She shook her head slowly. "Your voice don't feel like it," she said.
"What is it? What are you going to say?"

He sighed and looked away from her with an irritated expression.
"Little stupid!" he muttered--she didn't appreciate him and he was a
fool to expect it. But "art for art's sake"; and he went on in tones
of gentle melancholy. "I love you, but fate has again caught me up. I
am being whirled away. I stretch out my arms to you--in vain. Do you
understand?" It exasperated him for her to be so still--why didn't she
weep?

She shook her head and replied quietly:

"No--what is it? Don't you love me any more?"

"Love has nothing to do with it," he said, as gently as he could in the
irritating circumstances. "My mysterious destiny has--"

"You said that before," she interrupted. "What is it? Can't you tell
me so that I can understand?"

"You never loved me!" he cried bitterly.

"You know that isn't so," she answered. "Won't you tell me, Carl?"

"A specter has risen from my past--I must leave you--I may never
return--"

She gave a low, wailing cry--it seemed like an echo of the