flute-like quality which, though it was
without a trace of conviction, very few people who had ever heard it
had resisted.

"I am aware of that," said Vincent quietly.

She looked beautifully dazed.

"Yet this morning you spoke--as if--"

"But what is love such as yours worth? A man must be on the crest of the
wave to keep it; otherwise it changes automatically into contempt. I
don't care about it, Adelaide. I can't use it in a life like mine."

She looked at him, and a dreamlike state began to come over her. She
simply couldn't believe in the state of mind of those sick-room days; she
could never really, she thought, have been less passionately admiring
than she was at that minute, yet the half-recollection confused her and
kept her silent.

"Perhaps it's vanity on my part," he said, "but contempt like yours is
something I could never forgive."

"You would forgive me anything if you loved me." Her tone was noble
and sincere.

"Perhaps."

"You mean you don't?"

"Adelaide, there are times when a person chooses between loving and
being loved."

The sentence made her feel sick with fear, but she asked:

"Tell me just what you mean."

"Perhaps I could keep on loving you if I shut my eyes to the kind of
person you are; but if I did that, I could not hold you an instant."

She stared at him as fascinated as a bird by a snake. This, it seemed to
her, was the truth, the final summing up of their relation. She had lost
him, and yet she was eternally his.

As she looked at him she became aware that he was growing slowly pale. He
was standing, and he put his hand out to the mantelpiece to steady
himself. She thought he was going to faint.

"Vincent," she said, "let me help you to the sofa."

She wanted now to see him falter, to feel his hand on her shoulder,
anything for a closer touch with him. For half a minute, perhaps, they
remained motionless, and then the color began to come back into his face.

He smiled bitterly.

"They tell me you are such a good sick nurse, Mrs. Farron," he said, "so
considerate to the weak. But I don't need your help, thank you."

She covered her face with her hands. He seemed to her stronger and more
cruel than anything she had imagined. In a minute he left her alone.

CHAPTER XVI

Farron cared, perhaps, no more for appearances than Adelaide did, but
his habitual manner was much better adapted to concealment. In him the
fluctuations between the deepest depression a