oken--a word whose absence he had only covered
up by phrases.

"Well? Have you nothing to say to me?" he asked, when some minutes had
gone by.

"I'm thinking."

"Of what?"

"Of what you say about prudence. I like it. It seems to me I ought to be
prudent, too."

"Undoubtedly," he agreed, in the dry tone of one who assents to what he
finds slightly disagreeable.

"I mean," she said, quickly, "that I ought to be prudent for you--for us
all. There are a great many things to be thought of, things which people
of our age ought not to let pass unconsidered. Men _think_ the way
through difficulties, while women _feel_ it. I'm afraid I must ask for
time to get my instincts into play."

"Do you mean that you can't give me an answer to-night--before I go on
this long journey?"

"I couldn't give you an affirmative one."

"But you could say, No?"

"If you pressed the matter--if you insisted--that's what I should have
to say."

"Why?"

"That would be--my secret."

"Is it that you think you couldn't love me?"

For the first time the color came to her cheek and surged up to her
temples, not suddenly or hotly, but with the semi-diaphanous lightness
of roseate vapor mounting into winter air. As he came nearer, rounding
the protective barrier of the arm-chair, she retreated.

"I should have to solve some other questions before I could answer
that," she said, trying to meet his eyes with the necessary steadiness.

"Couldn't I help you?"

She shook her head.

"Then couldn't you consider it first?"

"A woman generally does consider it first, but she speaks about it
last."

"But you could tell me the result of what you think, as far as you've
drawn conclusions?"

"No; because whatever I should say you would find misleading. If you're
in earnest about what you say to-night, it would be better for us both
that you should give me time."

"I'm willing to do that. But you speak as if you had a doubt of me."

"I've no doubt of you; I've only a doubt about myself. The woman you've
known for the last twelve months isn't the woman other people have known
in the years before that. She isn't the Diane Eveleth of Paris any more
than she is the Diane de la Ferronaise of the hills of Connemara, or of
the convent at Auteuil. But I don't know which is the real woman, or
whether the one who now seems to me dead mightn't rise again."

"I shouldn't be afraid of her."

"But I should. You say that because you didn't know her; a