rom the like of me," he echoed Carlotta's phrase.

For almost the first time in his life humility possessed him. Had he
known it, it lifted him higher in Tony's eyes than all his arrogance and
conceit of power had ever done.

Gently she slid her hand into his.

"I don't feel far away, Alan. I feel very near. But I can't marry
you--not now anyway. You will have to prove to them all--to me, too--that
you are a man a Holiday might be proud to marry. I could forget the
past. I think I could persuade Uncle Phil and the rest to forget it, too.
They are none of them self-righteous Puritans. They could understand,
just as I understand, that a man might fall in battle and carry scars of
defeat, but not be really conquered. Alan, tell me something. It isn't
easy to ask but I must. Are the things I have to forget far back in the
past or--nearer? I know they go back to Paris days, the days Miss Lottie
belongs to. Oh, yes," as he started at that. "I guessed that. You mustn't
blame her. She was merely trying to warn me. She meant it for my good,
not to be spiteful and not because she still cares, though I think she
does. And I know there are things that belong to the time after your
mother died, and you didn't care what you did because you were so
unhappy. But are they still nearer? How close are they, Alan?"

He shook his head despairingly.

"I wish I could lie to you, Tony. I can't. They are too close to be
pleasant to remember. But they never will be again. I swear it. Can you
believe it?"

"I shall have to believe it--be convinced of it before I could marry
you. I can't marry you, not being certain of you, just because my heart
beats fast when you come near me, because I love your voice and your
kisses and would rather dance with you than to be sure of going to
Heaven. Marriage is a world without end business. I can't rush into it
blindfold. I won't."

"You don't love me as I love you or you couldn't reason so coldly about
it," he reproached. "You would go blindfold anywhere--to Hell itself
even, with me."

"I don't know, Alan. I could let myself go. While we were dancing in
there I am afraid I would have been willing to go even as far as you say
with you. But out here in the star-light I am back being myself. I want
to make my life into something clean and sweet and fine. I don't want to
let myself be driven to follow weak, selfish, rash impulses and do things
that will hurt other people and myself. I don't want to make