u
with your friends." Bulstrode accepted quietly. "The two young people
are engaged to be married and the other two are husband and
wife--well...?"

A spasm of pain crossed Felicia Warren's face and she put what she had
to say with singular delicacy for an actress who had risen from the
people.

"I know," she said, "I understand, but when I saw you, I knew that
there was no hope for any other woman who loved you--and I gave you up
then. I sent for Pollona."

The introduction of even so little into the room as the suggestion of
the woman he loved, startled Bulstrode as nothing else under the
circumstances could have done. It struck him like a lash. He was
disenchanted, and he more quietly considered the girl whose confession
and whose beauty had made him nearly disloyal.

Felicia Warren, as though she took it in her own hands and, mistress of
herself, knew how much she could take and what she could deny herself,
laid her hand on his arm.

"You can do nothing at all, just as you have always done--and I--I can
learn to forget. But I have refused your money to-night," she said
piteously, "haven't I? and I am penniless; I have refused more too;
perhaps what no woman who loves could refuse as well. Don't you think
that there is something due me? Answer me this? Tell me. You _do_
love her, you _do_?"

As she leaned against him, the years seemed to fall away and to leave
her a girl again, nothing more than a child he had known. He took her
face between his hands and looked into it as one might look into a
well. He saw nothing but his own reflection there.

"God knows," he said deeply, "I could not willingly pain a living
creature, and to think that I should have made you suffer, have made a
woman suffer for years. Let me do all I can, my dear, let me--let me!"

"You love her?" she persisted.

His hands dropped to his side. "With all my soul," he said, "with all
my soul!" He thought she would sink to the floor, but instead she
caught fast hold of the table on which his money lay. She leaned on it
heavily, refusing his aid. He took one of the girl's cold hands in his.

"Listen, listen! Let me say a word. How do you think it makes a man
feel to hear what you have told me to-night? to see you as you are, to
grow to know you in such a short--in such a terrible way, and in a few
hours to grow to know you so well, to find you dear, desirable, and
then to leave you, as you tell me I must leave you. I ca