lashed and clanged with the hardness, the warfare, the
uproar of the outer world. After the hush, the gentleness of Paradise,
it was like being thrown, dizzy and bewildered, among the traffic and
turmoil of a great city.

"Don't be cruel," he murmured.

"I? Cruel!" she laughed.

She got up and walked up and down the room. A fever of desperate,
baffled anger burned in her. He saw that she did not trust herself to
speak. She was afraid of betraying, to herself and to him, the ugly
distortion of her soul.

He was not to die; he was not her lover; and Kitty was the primitive
woman. She could be in love, but she could not love unless pity were
appealed to. His loss of all passion had killed her romance. His loss of
all pathos had, perhaps, killed even human tenderness. For it was he who
had drawn away. She was humiliated to the dust.

And that she made a great effort upon herself, so that to his eyes the
ugliness might not be betrayed, he guessed presently when, looking
persistently away from him and out at the garden--their garden!
alas!--where a fine rain fell silently, she said: "I am glad that your
sorrow is over. I hope that you will find happier things--and realler
things--than you have found in this month. I will remember all that you
have said to-day. I think that you have cured me for ever. I shall not
be in love again."

"Kitty! Kitty!" he breathed out. She hurt him too much, the poor child,
arming its empty heart against him. "Don't speak like that.
Remember--the month has been beautiful."

The tears rose in her eyes, but the hostility did not leave them.
"Beautiful? When it has not been real?"

"Can't we remember the beauty--make something more real?" he now almost
wept. But there it was, the shallow, the hard child's heart. He was not
in love with her. And, like a nest of snakes, the memory of all her
humiliations--her appeals, her proffered love, his evasions and
withdrawals--was awake within her. She smiled, a smile that, seeking
magnanimity, found only bitterness. "You must speak for yourself, dear
Nicholas. For me it was real, and you have spoiled the beauty."

The servants came in while she spoke and she moved aside to make way for
the placing of the tea-table. Traces of the fever were upon her yet; her
delicate face was flushed, her eyes sparkled. But she had regained the
place she meant to keep. She would own to no discomfitures deeper than
those that were creditable to her. Moving here and the