ou
leave her nothing. If you go now, I don't care what happens to
me--death--or worse, That's how you make a bad woman, Robin. Taking
her love from her and then letting her go. You are taking her soul!"

But he placed her gently aside. "Nonsense, Dahlia," he said. "You are
excited to-night. You exaggerate. You will meet a man much worthier
than myself, and then you will see that I was right."

He opened the door and was gone.

She sat down at the table. She heard him open and shut the hall door,
and then his steps echoed down the street, and at last there was
silence. She sat at the table with her head bent, her eyes gazing at
the oranges and the bananas. The house was perfectly silent, and her
very heart seemed to have ceased to beat. Of course she did not
realise it; it seemed to her still as though he would come back in a
moment and put his arms round her and tell her that it was all a
game--just to see if she had really cared. But the silence of the
street and the house was terrible. It choked her, and she pulled at
her frock to loosen the tightness about her throat. It was cruel of
him to have gone away like that--but of course he would come back.
Only why was that cold misery at her heart? Why did she feel as if
some one had placed a hand on her and drawn all her life away, and left
her with no emotion or feeling--only a dull, blank, despair, like a
cold fog through which no sun shone?

For she was beginning to realise it slowly. He had gone away, after
telling her, brutally, frankly, that he was tired of her--that he had,
indeed, never really cared for her. That was it--he had never cared
for her--all those things that he had promised in the summer had been
false, words without any meaning. All that idyll had been hollow, a
sham, and she had made it the centre of her world.

She got up from the table and swayed a little as she stood. She
pressed her hands against her forehead as though she would drive into
her brain the fact that there would be no one now--no one at all--it
was all a lie, a lie, a lie!

The door opened softly and Mrs. Feverel stole in. "Dahlia--what has he
done?"

She looked at her as though she could not see her.

"Oh, nothing," she said slowly. "He did nothing. Only it's all
over--there is not going to be any more."

And then, as though the full realisation of it had only just been borne
in upon her, she sat down at the table again and burst into passionate
cry