and confused. Before
my mental eye swam a mist of manuscript; before my physical eye rose
and fell that gently beating breast. I took out my watch.

"It's a quarter past twelve, Lucia," I said, rising; "I must go."

The girl started to her feet and came in front of me.

"Victor, are you offended at what I said?"

I looked down at her with a slight smile.

"I am not so easily offended," I said, quietly.

"I will talk about all these things with you another day--not now."

"And do forgive me for siting up at nights. I know you do not like it.
I know it ruins my looks, but I must work. Besides, all my excitement,
all my amusement, is in it too. When I am not with you it is all I
have. It is different for you, as a man, besides your work and besides
myself, you have all sorts of distractions and--"

"What sort of distractions do you think I have?" I asked, quietly, and
looking straight into her eyes.

Her words might mean and include a very great deal.

"Oh, how can I say! When you feel restless and unable to work at seven
in the evening, say from then till seven the next morning your time is
your own--balls, the Empire; there are a thousand things--all the
pleasure, or at any rate the passing excitement that you can take in
these ways, I crush into the excitement that there is in work--in
overwork."

There was nothing in the actual words, but I felt the thoughts that
underlay them, unexpressed. I resented the opinion she held of me. It
was untrue, and I meant to remove it. I was silent an instant, thinking
how to find words passably comprehensible and yet conventionally
circumlocutory and euphemistic. After a moment I said simply--

"If you think I am leading a fast life, it is a mistake. I am not. What
makes you think I have distractions, as you put it?"

"Oh, nothing, except that I know you are constantly not at home at--in
the evenings. But really, Victor--" she added, a scarlet flush leaping
across her face, and then leaving it pale and cold, with a shade of
reserve and pride upon it. "I have no wish to approach this subject at
all. I should never think of enquiring into or interfering with a man's
life. These are things that must rest in his own hands."

I looked at her, as the graceful figure seemed to expand with pride, at
the dignity of each line of her form and the pose of the distinguished
head, and an irritated flush crept into my own face.

"I am out constantly, as you say," I answered, "becaus