e
could look at her unseen. How deep, and softly dark her eyes, when for a
second they rested on his! A moth settled on her knee--a cunning little
creature, with its hooded, horned owl's face, and tiny black slits of
eyes! Would it have come so confidingly to anyone but her? The Colonel
knew its name--he had collected it. Very common, he said. The
interest in it passed; but Lennan stayed, bent forward, gazing at that
silk-covered knee.

The voice of Mrs. Ercott, sharper than its wont, said: "What day does
Robert say he wants you back, my dear?"

He managed to remain gazing at the moth, even to take it gently from her
knee, while he listened to her calm answer.

"Tuesday, I believe."

Then he got up, and let the moth fly into the darkness; his hands and
lips were trembling, and he was afraid of their being seen. He had never
known, had not dreamed, of such a violent, sick feeling. That this man
could thus hale her home at will! It was grotesque, fantastic, awful,
but--it was true! Next Tuesday she would journey back away from him to
be again at the mercy of her Fate! The pain of this thought made him
grip the railing, and grit his teeth, to keep himself from crying out.
And another thought came to him: I shall have to go about with this
feeling, day and night, and keep it secret.

They were saying good-night; and he had to smirk and smile, and
pretend--to her above all--that he was happy, and he could see that she
knew it was pretence.

Then he was alone, with the feeling that he had failed her at the first
shot; torn, too, between horror of what he suddenly saw before him, and
longing to be back in her presence at any cost.... And all this on the
day of that first kiss which had seemed to him to make her so utterly
his own.

He sat down on a bench facing the Casino. Neither the lights, nor
the people passing in and out, not even the gipsy bandsmen's music,
distracted his thoughts for a second. Could it be less than twenty-four
hours since he had picked up her handkerchief, not thirty yards away?
In that twenty-four hours he seemed to have known every emotion that man
could feel. And in all the world there was now not one soul to whom he
could speak his real thoughts--not even to her, because from her, beyond
all, he must keep at any cost all knowledge of his unhappiness. So
this was illicit love--as it was called! Loneliness, and torture! Not
jealousy--for her heart was his; but amazement, outrage, fear. Endles