demand in her
gaze. Mr. Heatherbloom straightened. The ordeal?--it must be met--though
that box of Pandora were best left unopened. He could not refuse her
anything; this she asked of him was not easy to grant, however.

"Where shall I begin?" he said uncertainly. "You know a great deal.
There doesn't seem much worth talking about."

"Begin where we left off--"

"Our boy-and-girl engagement? You broke it. Quite right of you!" She
stirred slightly. "It was, at best, but a perfunctory business, half
arranged by our parents to keep the millions together--"

"You never blamed me a little, then?" she asked.

"I--blame you?" wonderingly. "You were as far from me as a star. What
you thought of me, you told me; it was all right--true stuff. Though it
sank in like a blade. I was nothing--worse than nothing. A rich man's
son!--a commonplace type. A good fellow some called me at Monte Carlo,
Paris, elsewhere." He paused. A moment he seemed another
personality--that other one. She saw it anew, caught a glimpse of it
like a flash on a mirror; then he seemed to relapse farther back into
the shadow. "I really don't want to bore you," he said perfunctorily,
raising an uncertain hand to the stray; lock on his forehead.

"You aren't--doing that. Go on." Her eyes were full of questions. "After
I saw you that last time"--he nodded--"you disappeared. No one ever
heard anything of you; again, or knew what had become of you."

"As no one cared," he said with a short laugh, "what did it matter?"

"You were lost to the world--had vanished completely," she went on.
"Sometimes I thought--feared you were dead." Her voice changed.

"Feared?" he repeated. "Ah, yes! You did not want me to go out like
that."

"No," she said slowly. "Not like that."

He looked at her comprehendingly; in spite of the bitter passionate
repudiation of him, she had been a little in earnest--had cared, in the
least, how he went down.

"Why," he said, with a forced smile, "I didn't think you'd bother to
give the matter a thought."

"You had some purpose?" she persisted, studying him. "I see--seem to
feel it now. It all--you--were incomprehensible. I mean, when I saw you
again that first time, in New York, after so long--"

"It was funny, wasn't it?" he said with rather strained lightness. "The
Chariot of Concord--_What's the Matter with Mother_?--the gaping or
jibing crowd--then you, going by--"

Her eyelids drooped; he stood now erect and motionless; in s