d; I am unbelievable. There isn't any reality. There
isn't any love to be worthy of," she cried, and covered her face with
her hands.

Ainslie, from her attitude of avowal and abasement, looked his
stupefaction at Haldicott, and, for all answer, got a stupefaction as
complete.

"What _does_ she mean?" the younger man at length inquired.

"I don't think she knows what she means," Haldicott answered. "I think
she is, naturally, overwrought. All feeling, all meaning, is paralyzed.
She probably won't mean anything worth listening to for a good while."

They were speaking quite as if Allida, standing there with her hidden
face, were a lunatic, the diagnosis of whose harmless case was as yet
impossible in the absence of fresh symptoms. But a symptom was
forthcoming.

"I mean _that_," she said. "I don't understand. I can't explain. It's as
if something were broken in me. There isn't any love; there never will
be. If you can ever forgive me, please tell me so--when you do. It
mustn't be more than a dream for you, too--a dream only an hour long."

The two men again exchanged glances, but now with more hesitation.

"But, Allida,"--Ainslie spoke with gentle pain--"I love you. I am not
dreaming. Do you mean to say that you can't love me? Do you mean to say
that if I had loved you, with no letter to awaken me, you would have
thought your love a dream, merely because it was answered?"

"It isn't that. I can't explain. Something broke. You came too late.
It's as if I had died--and become almost another person. I know it's
unbelievable; I don't understand it myself; but it is true. It is all
over, really."

"All over?" dazedly Ainslie repeated. "But why? After those letters?
After what you were going to do? Allida!"

She dropped her hands, and once more her eyes went to Haldicott in that
look--the appeal of incompetence. But there was more in it: suffering
and shame, and a strength that strove to hide them from him.

"Perhaps, my dear Ainslie, you had better go," said Haldicott, "for the
present at least." But, in its wonder, his answering look now appealed
and was helpless in its incomprehension.

Ainslie stared at her.

"Good-bye," he said at last.

"Oh, good-bye," said Allida, with a fervor of relief that all her
humility and pity could not dissemble.

"Good-bye," he repeated, holding her hand, "sweet, strange, cruel
Allida."

She put her hand over his and looked clearly at him.

"Remember," she said--"remember