he
candle-shades. The alternative explanation of her indifference was not
slow in presenting itself. Her head had the same listening droop as
when he had caught sight of her the day before in Flamel's company; the
attitude revived the vividness of his impression. It was simple enough,
after all. She had ceased to care for him because she cared for someone
else.

As he followed her upstairs he felt a sudden stirring of his dormant
anger. His sentiments had lost all their factitious complexity. He had
already acquitted her of any connivance in his baseness, and he felt
only that he loved her and that she had escaped him. This was now,
strangely enough, his dominating thought: the consciousness that he and
she had passed through the fusion of love and had emerged from it as
incommunicably apart as though the transmutation had never taken place.
Every other passion, he mused, left some mark upon the nature; but love
passed like the flight of a ship across the waters.

She sank into her usual seat near the lamp, and he leaned against the
chimney, moving about with an inattentive hand the knick-knacks on the
mantel.

Suddenly he caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. She was
looking at him. He turned and their eyes met.

He moved across the room and stood before her.

"There's something that I want to say to you," he began in a low tone.

She held his gaze, but her color deepened. He noticed again, with a
jealous pang, how her beauty had gained in warmth and meaning. It was
as though a transparent cup had been filled with wine. He looked at her
ironically.

"I've never prevented your seeing your friends here," he broke out. "Why
do you meet Flamel in out-of-the-way places? Nothing makes a woman so
cheap--"

She rose abruptly and they faced each other a few feet apart.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I saw you with him last Sunday on the Riverside Drive," he went on, the
utterance of the charge reviving his anger.

"Ah," she murmured. She sank into her chair again and began to play with
a paper-knife that lay on the table at her elbow.

Her silence exasperated him.

"Well?" he burst out. "Is that all you have to say?"

"Do you wish me to explain?" she asked, proudly.

"Do you imply I haven't the right to?"

"I imply nothing. I will tell you whatever you wish to know. I went for
a walk with Mr. Flamel because he asked me to."

"I didn't suppose you went uninvited. But there are certain things a
s