ind," she said. "Do you
remember one night when you told me that nothing anybody else could do
would ever keep you from coming here? That if you--if you left me it
would be because I drove you away myself?"

"Yes," he said, huskily. "It was true."

"Are you sure?"

"Indeed I am," he answered in a low voice, but with conviction.

"Then----" She paused. "Well--but I haven't driven you away."

"No."

"And yet you've gone," she said, quietly.

"Do I seem so stupid as all that?"

"You know what I mean." She leaned back in her chair again, and her
hands, inactive for once, lay motionless in her lap. When she spoke it
was in a rueful whisper:

"I wonder if I HAVE driven you away?"

"You've done nothing--nothing at all," he said.

"I wonder----" she said once more, but she stopped. In her mind she was
going back over their time together since the first meeting--fragments
of talk, moments of silence, little things of no importance, little
things that might be important; moonshine, sunshine, starlight; and her
thoughts zigzagged among the jumbling memories; but, as if she made for
herself a picture of all these fragments, throwing them upon the canvas
haphazard, she saw them all just touched with the one tainting quality
that gave them coherence, the faint, false haze she had put over this
friendship by her own pretendings. And, if this terrible dinner, or
anything, or everything, had shown that saffron tint in its true colour
to the man at her side, last night almost a lover, then she had indeed
of herself driven him away, and might well feel that she was lost.

"Do you know?" she said, suddenly, in a clear, loud voice. "I have the
strangest feeling. I feel as if I were going to be with you only about
five minutes more in all the rest of my life!"

"Why, no," he said. "Of course I'm coming to see you--often. I----"

"No," she interrupted. "I've never had a feeling like this before.
It's--it's just SO; that's all! You're GOING--why, you're never coming
here again!" She stood up, abruptly, beginning to tremble all over.
"Why, it's FINISHED, isn't it?" she said, and her trembling was manifest
now in her voice. "Why, it's all OVER, isn't it? Why, yes!"

He had risen as she did. "I'm afraid you're awfully tired and nervous,"
he said. "I really ought to be going."

"Yes, of COURSE you ought," she cried, despairingly. "There's nothing
else for you to do. When anything's spoiled, people CAN'T do anything
but run away