fie whistling for her dogs, and then, from
the terrace, her mother calling her.

"There--THAT for instance," Sophy Viner said.

Darrow broke out: "It's I who ought to go!"

She kept her small pale smile. "What good would that do any of us--now?"

He covered his face with his hands. "Good God!" he groaned. "How could I
tell?"

"You couldn't tell. We neither of us could." She seemed to turn the
problem over critically. "After all, it might have been YOU instead of
me!"

He took another distracted turn about the room and coming back to her
sat down in a chair at her side. A mocking hand seemed to dash the words
from his lips. There was nothing on earth that he could say to her that
wasn't foolish or cruel or contemptible...

"My dear," he began at last, "oughtn't you, at any rate, to try?"

Her gaze grew grave. "Try to forget you?"

He flushed to the forehead. "I meant, try to give Owen more time; to
give him a chance. He's madly in love with you; all the good that's in
him is in your hands. His step-mother felt that from the first. And she
thought--she believed----"

"She thought I could make him happy. Would she think so now?"

"Now...? I don't say now. But later? Time modifies...rubs out...more
quickly than you think...Go away, but let him hope...I'm going
too--WE'RE going--" he stumbled on the plural--"in a very few weeks:
going for a long time, probably. What you're thinking of now may never
happen. We may not all be here together again for years."

She heard him out in silence, her hands clasped on her knee, her eyes
bent on them. "For me," she said, "you'll always be here."

"Don't say that--oh, don't! Things change...people change...You'll see!"

"You don't understand. I don't want anything to change. I don't want to
forget--to rub out. At first I imagined I did; but that was a foolish
mistake. As soon as I saw you again I knew it...It's not being here
with you that I'm afraid of--in the sense you think. It's being here, or
anywhere, with Owen." She stood up and bent her tragic smile on him. "I
want to keep you all to myself."

The only words that came to him were futile denunciations of his
folly; but the sense of their futility checked them on his lips. "Poor
child--you poor child!" he heard himself vainly repeating.

Suddenly he felt the strong reaction of reality and its impetus brought
him to his feet. "Whatever happens, I intend to go--to go for good,"
he exclaimed. "I want you to understan