out in its white, summer draperies,
clear and crystalline as herself against the sombre background of the
cathedral porch.

And Maurice watched her through the dim shadows of gathering twilight:
he watched her as a fowler watches the bird which he has captured and
never wholly tamed. Somehow he felt that her love for him was not quite
what it had been until now: that she was no longer the same girlish,
submissive creature on whose soft cheeks a word or look from him had the
power to raise a flush of joy.

She was different now--in a curious, intangible way which he could not
define.

And jealousy reared up its threatening head more insistently:--bitter
jealousy which embraced de Marmont, Clyffurde, Fate and
Circumstance--but Clyffurde above all--the stranger hitherto deemed of
no account, but who now--wounded, abandoned, dying, perhaps--seemed a
more formidable rival than Maurice awhile ago had deemed possible.

He cursed himself for that touch of sentiment--he called it
cowardice--which the other night, after the ball, had prompted him to
write to Crystal. But for that voluntary confession--he thought--she
could never have despised him. And following up the train of his own
thoughts, and realising that these had not been spoken aloud, he
suddenly called out abruptly:

"Is it because of my letter, Crystal?"

She gave a start, and turned even paler than she had been before.
Obviously she had been brought roughly back from the land of dreams.

"Your letter, Maurice?" she asked vaguely, "what do you mean?"

"I wrote you a letter the other night," he continued, speaking quickly
and harshly, "after the ball. Did you receive it?"

"Yes."

"And read it?"

"Of course."

"And is it because of it that your love for me has gone?"

He had not meant to put his horrible suspicions into words. The very
fact--now that he had spoken--appeared more tangible, even irremediable.
She did not reply to his taunt, and he came a little closer to her and
took her hand, and when she tried to withdraw it from his grasp he held
it tightly and bent down his head so that in the gathering gloom he
could read every line of her face.

"Because of what I told you in my letter you despised me, did you not?"
he asked.

Again she made no reply. What could she say that would not hurt him far
more than did her silence? The next moment he had drawn her back right
into the shadow of the cathedral walls, into a dark angle, where no one
could