wering a secret voice, and not what the other was saying.

"'Don't you _feel_ anything at all?' I remember bursting out at her.
As I asked it the tears were streaming down her face. I felt angry with
her, and was almost glad to note that her lids were red and that she
didn't cry becomingly. I can't express my sensation to you except
by saying that she seemed part of life's huge league against me. And
suddenly I thought of an afternoon we had spent together in the country,
on a ferny hill-side, when we had sat under a beech-tree, and her hand
had lain palm upward in the moss, close to mine, and I had watched a
little black-and-red beetle creeping over it....

"The bell rang, and we heard the voice of a visitor and the click of an
umbrella in the umbrella-stand.

"She rose to go into the inner drawing-room, and I caught her suddenly
by the wrist. 'You understand,' I said, 'that we can't go on like this?'

"'I understand,' she answered, and moved away to meet her visitor. As I
went out I heard her saying in the other room: 'Yes, we're really off on
the twelfth.'"

IV

"I wrote her a long letter that night, and waited two days for a reply.

"On the third day I had a brief line saying that she was going to spend
Sunday with some friends who had a place near Riverdale, and that she
would arrange to see me while she was there. That was all.

"It was on a Saturday that I received the note and I came out here the
same night. The next morning was rainy, and I was in despair, for I had
counted on her asking me to take her for a drive or a long walk. It was
hopeless to try to say what I had to say to her in the drawing-room of a
crowded country-house. And only eleven days were left!

"I stayed indoors all the morning, fearing to go out lest she should
telephone me. But no sign came, and I grew more and more restless and
anxious. She was too free and frank for coquetry, but her silence and
evasiveness made me feel that, for some reason, she did not wish to hear
what she knew I meant to say. Could it be that she was, after all, more
conventional, less genuine, than I had thought? I went again and again
over the whole maddening round of conjecture; but the only conclusion I
could rest in was that, if she loved me as I loved her, she would be as
determined as I was to let no obstacle come between us during the days
that were left.

"The luncheon-hour came and passed, and there was no word from her. I
had ordered my tra