e. There was a finality about
it--definite, unalterable. She looked at him dry-eyed, her face
tragically beautiful in its agony. But he seemed impervious to either
its beauty or its suffering. There was no hint of softening in him.
Without another word he swung round on his heel and turned to leave her.

"Michael . . . don't go!" The lovely voice was a mere thread of
sound--hoarse and strangulated. "Don't go! . . . Oh, be a little
merciful!"

She laid an imploring hand on his arm, and at the touch of her his iron
composure shook a little. For a moment the hardness in his eyes was
wiped out by a look of intolerable pain. Then, with a quiet, inexorable
movement he released himself from her straining clasp.

"There's no question of mercy," he said inflexibly. "I'm not judging
you, or punishing you. It's simply that I can't marry you. . . . You
must see that June's death--my sister's death--lies at your door."

"No," she said. "No. I suppose you can't marry me--now."

Her breath came in short, painful gasps. Her face seemed to have grown
smaller--shrunk. There was a pinched look about the nostrils and
every drop of blood had drained away, leaving even her lips a curious
greyish-white. She leaned forward, swaying a little.

"I suppose," she said in a clear, dry voice, "you don't even love me any
more?"

His hands clenched and he took a sudden impetuous step towards her.

"Not love you?" he said. And at last the man's own agony broke through
his enforced calm, shaking his voice so that it was hoarse and terrible.
"Not love you? I love you now as I loved you the day I first saw you.
God in heaven! Did you think love could be killed so easily? Does it
die--just because it's forbidden by every decent instinct that a man
possesses? If so, nine-tenths of us would find the world an easier place
to live in!"

"And there is--no forgiveness, Michael?" The lovely grief-wrung face was
uplifted to his beseechingly.

"Don't ask me!" he said hoarsely. "You know there can be none."

He turned and strode to the door. He did not look back even when his
name tore itself like a cry between her lips. The next moment the sound
of a door's closing came dully to her ears.

She looked vaguely round the room. The fire was dying, the charred logs
sinking down on to a bed of smouldering cinders. A touch would scatter
them from their semblance of logs into a heap of grey, formless ash.
Outside the window the snow still fell monotonously, w