you wanted, no matter about the cost, you see me again. You
find I have mended my heart, have coaxed a few flowers of happiness to
bloom. You find there was something you did not destroy, something you
think it will make you happier to destroy."

"Yes," I answered, "I came to try to make you as unhappy as I am. For I
love you."

She drew a long breath. "Well," she said evenly, "for the first time in
your life you are defeated. I learned the lesson you so thoroughly
taught me. And I built the wall round my garden high and strong. You--"
she smiled, a little raillery, a little scorn--"you can't break in,
Harvey--nor slip in."

"No need," I said. "For I _am_ in--I've always been in."

Her bosom rose and fell quickly, and her eyes shifted. But that was for
an instant only. "If you were as brave as you are bold!" she scoffed.

"If I were as brave without you as I should be with you!" I replied.
Then: "But you love as a woman loves--herself first, the man afterward."

"Harvey Sayler denouncing selfishness!"

"Do not sneer," I said. "For--I love you as a man loves. A poor, pale
shadow of ideal love, no doubt, but a man's best, Elizabeth."

I saw that she was shaken; but even as I began to thrill with a hope so
high that it was giddy with fear, she was once more straight and strong
and calm.

"You have come. You have tried. You have failed," she went on after a
long pause. And in spite of her efforts, that deep voice of hers was
gentle and wonderfully sweet. "Now--you will return to your life, I to
mine." And she moved toward the entrance to the drawing-room, I
following her. We stood in silence at the front doorway waiting for my
carriage to come up. I watched her--maddeningly mistress of herself.

"How can you be so cold!" I cried. "Don't you see, don't you feel, how
I, who love you, suffer?"

Without a word she stretched out her beautiful, white hands, long and
narrow and capable. In each of the upturned palms were four deep and
bloody prints where her nails had been crushing into them.

Before I could lift my eyes to her face she was turning to rejoin her
workmen. As I stood uncertain, dazed, she glanced at me with a bright
smile. "Good-by again," she called. "A pleasant journey!"

"Thank you," I replied. "Good-by."

Driving toward the road gates, I looked at the house many times, from
window to window, everywhere. Not a glimpse of her until I was almost at
the road again. Then I saw her back--the graceful w