have promises," she whispered, clasping her hands and nodding her
head at me. "Ah, they make songs on me, and laugh at me, and Castlemaine
looks at me as though I were the street-dirt under her feet. But they
shall see! Ay, they shall see that I can match them!" She sprang to her
feet in reckless merriment, crying, "Shall I make a pretty countess,
Simon?" She came near to me and whispered with a mysterious air, "Simon,
Simon!"

I looked up at her sparkling eyes.

"Simon, what's he whom you serve, whom you're proud to serve? Who is he,
I say?" She broke into a laugh of triumph.

But I, hearing her laugh, and finding my heart filled with a sudden
terror, spread my hands over my eyes and fell back heavily in my chair,
like a sick man or a drunken. For now, indeed, I saw that my gem was
but a pebble. And the echo of her laugh rang in my ears.

"So I can't come, Simon," I heard her say. "You see that I can't come.
No, no, I can't come"; and again she laughed.

I sat where I was, hearing nothing but the echo of her laugh, unable to
think save of the truth that was driven so cruelly into my mind. The
first realising of things that cannot be undone brings to a young man a
fierce impotent resentment; that was in my heart, and with it a sudden
revulsion from what I had desired, as intemperate as the desire, as
cruel, it may be, as the thing which gave it birth. Nell's laughter died
away, and she was silent. Presently I felt a hand rest on my hands as
though seeking to convey sympathy in a grief but half-understood. I
shrank away, moving my hands till hers no longer touched them. There are
little acts, small matters often, on which remorse attends while life
lasts. Even now my heart is sore that I shrank away from her; she was
different now in nothing from what I had known of her; but I who had
desired passionately now shunned her; the thing had come home to me,
plain, close, in an odious intimacy. Yet I wish I had not shrunk away;
before I could think I had done it; and I found no words; better perhaps
that I attempted none.

I looked up; she was holding out the hand before her; there was a
puzzled smile on her lips.

"Does it burn, does it prick, does it soil, Simon?" she asked. "See,
touch it, touch it. It is as it was, isn't it?" She put it close by my
hand, waiting for me to take it, but I did not take it. "As it was when
you kissed it," said she; but still I did not take it.

I rose to my feet slowly and heavily, l