ing to say something of what I meant.

"I never tried to interfere," she broke in once.

"I made you interfere, I myself," was my lame answer; and the rest I
said was as lame.

"I don't understand," she murmured forlornly and petulantly. "Oh, I
suppose I see what you mean in a way; but I don't believe it. I don't
see why you should feel like that about it. Do men feel like that? Women
don't."

"I can't help it," I pleaded, pressing her hand. She drew it away
gently.

"And what will it mean?" she asked. "Am I never to see you?"

"Often, often, I hope, but----"

"I'm not to talk to you about--about important things, things we both
care about?"

I felt the absurdity of such a position. The abstract made concrete is
so often made absurd.

"Then you won't come often; you won't care about coming." Something in
her thoughts made her flush suddenly. She met my eyes and took courage.
"You asked a good deal of me," she said.

I made no answer; she understood my silence. She rose, leaving me on my
knees. I threw myself on the sofa and she went to the hearthrug. She
knew that what I had asked of her I asked no more. There was a long
silence between us. At last she spoke in a very low voice.

"It's only a little sooner than it must have been," she said. "And I--I
suppose I must be glad that it's come home to me now instead of--later.
I daresay you'll be glad of that too, Augustin."

"How are we to live, how are we to meet, what are we to be to one
another?" she broke out the next moment. "We can't go on as if nothing
had happened."

"I don't know."

"You don't know! Yet you're hard as iron about it. Oh, I daresay you're
right; you must be. It's only a little sooner."

She turned her back to me, and stood looking down into the fire. I was
trying to answer her question, to realize how it would be between us,
how, having lived in the real, we must now dwell in the unreal with one
another. I was wondering how I could meet her and not show that I loved
her, how I could love her and yet be true to my idol, the conception
that governed me. Suddenly she spoke, without turning or lifting her
head.

"Whom shall you send to Paris?"

"I don't know. I haven't settled."

"Wetter mentioned somebody else--besides himself?"

"Only Max," said I, with a dreary laugh.

"Hadn't you better send Max? That is, if you think him fit for it."

I thought that she was relieving her petulance by a bitter jest; but a
moment later she