ad gradually paled and hardened. From sallow it turned
to a dusky white, and lines of obstinacy deepened between the ironic
eyebrows and about the weak amused mouth.

"Understand? What do you want me to understand," He laughed. "That
you're trying to chuck me already?"

She shrank at the sneer of the "already," but instantly remembered that
it was the only thing he could be expected to say, since it was just
because he couldn't understand that she was flying from him.

"Oh, Streff--if I knew how to tell you!"

"It doesn't so much matter about the how. Is that what you're trying to
say?"

Her head drooped, and she saw the dead leaves whirling across the path
at her feet, lifted on a sudden wintry gust.

"The reason," he continued, clearing his throat with a stiff smile, "is
not quite as important to me as the fact."

She stood speechless, agonized by his pain. But still, she thought, he
had remembered the dinner at the Embassy. The thought gave her courage
to go on.

"It wouldn't do, Streff. I'm not a bit the kind of person to make you
happy."

"Oh, leave that to me, please, won't you?"

"No, I can't. Because I should be unhappy too."

He clicked at the leaves as they whirled past. "You've taken a rather
long time to find it out." She saw that his new-born sense of his own
consequence was making him suffer even more than his wounded affection;
and that again gave her courage.

"If I've taken long it's all the more reason why I shouldn't take
longer. If I've made a mistake it's you who would have suffered from
it...."

"Thanks," he said, "for your extreme solicitude."

She looked at him helplessly, penetrated by the despairing sense of
their inaccessibility to each other. Then she remembered that Nick,
during their last talk together, had seemed as inaccessible, and
wondered if, when human souls try to get too near each other, they do
not inevitably become mere blurs to each other's vision. She would have
liked to say this to Streff-but he would not have understood it either.
The sense of loneliness once more enveloped her, and she groped in vain
for a word that should reach him.

"Let me go home alone, won't you?" she appealed to him.

"Alone?"

She nodded. "To-morrow--to-morrow...."

He tried, rather valiantly, to smile. "Hang tomorrow! Whatever is wrong,
it needn't prevent my seeing you home." He glanced toward the taxi that
awaited them at the end of the deserted drive.

"No, please. You're i