Max. "You wouldn't be human if it hadn't."

"I think it was _in_human. For when I remembered--other things, I didn't
seem to care. I was--_glad_ when you said you had business and couldn't
stay to tea. I hoped you'd forget that you'd asked me to dinner, because
I wanted so much to have it with Sir Knight--with Richard. I thought
he'd be sure to invite me, and take me to the train afterward. I was
going to apologize to you as well as I could; but even if you'd been
hurt, I was ready to sacrifice you for him."

"Please don't punish yourself by confessing to me," Max broke in.
"Indeed it's not necessary. I----"

"I'm not doing it to punish myself," Sanda exclaimed. "I've _been_
punished--oh, sickeningly punished!--already. I'm confessing to you
because--I want our friendship to go on as if I hadn't done anything
ungrateful and cruel to spoil it. I'm trying to atone."

"You've done that a thousand times over," Max comforted her, feeling
that he ought to be comforted at the same time, yet aware that it was
not so. He began to realize that he was boyishly jealous of the great
man whose blaze of glory had made his poor rushlight of friendship
flicker into nothingness.

"Then if I have atoned, tell me quickly your news," said the girl.

"The news is, that I haven't any past which belongs to me--and God knows
whether I've a future." Max gave lightness to the sombre words with a
laugh.

"Then the worst has happened to you?"

"One might call it that." Still he managed to laugh.

"Are you very miserable?"

"I don't know. I haven't had time to think."

"Don't take time--yet. Stay with me, as we planned before--before----"

"But Mr. Stanton? Aren't you----"

"No, I'm not. He left me fifteen minutes after you went. I shan't see
him again."

"Not at the train?"

"No, not anywhere. You see, he has such important things to do, he
hasn't time to bother much with--with a person he still thinks of as a
little girl. Why, I told you, he would hardly have known me if I hadn't
spoken to him! He's going away to-morrow, leaving for Touggourt. There
are all sorts of exciting preparations to make for a tremendous
expedition he means to undertake, though it will be months before he can
be ready to start. He can think of nothing else just now. Oh, it was
only 'How do you do?' and 'Good-bye' between us, I assure you, over
there at the little tea-table I'd been keeping for you and me."

"It didn't look like anything so superficial,"