nd
shall sail for Canada this day week. I can't stand it any longer. I
can't breathe here. Town or country, it's all the same--the air chokes
me, it's teeming with moral bacilli. You never thought I was so
particular? No more did I----". He paused, knitting his brows. "I admit
frankly that I'm a bad hat. This place has been my ruin, as it has of
many a better man than me. Perhaps, if it hadn't been for you,
Audrey--but I won't press that point; it wouldn't be generous, however
just. Anyhow, whatever my past has been, my future lies in your hands. I
would say your love was life or death to me, but that wouldn't be
anywhere near the truth. It's not so much a question of death as a
question of damnation."

Hardy was desperately in earnest, but not so much so as to be careless
of rhetorical effect. In his desire to represent himself as a fallen
angel he had done himself no little injustice, as well as grossly
exaggerated the power of Audrey's regenerative influence.

She was evidently moved. She took no pains to restrain the trembling of
her lips, more than was necessary to preserve their delicate outline.
Hardy had paid homage to her as the superior being.

It marked an epoch in the history of his passion.

He rose to his feet and looked down on her as from a height. A fallen
angel is not without his epic sublimity.

The lady hesitated. She pulled out the tremolo stop, and then spoke.

"You say that if it hadn't been for me--I don't quite understand you,
but you are mistaken if you think I never cared for you--never cared, I
mean to say, for your good." She also rose, with an air of having made a
statement as final as it was clear and convincing. He laid his hand on
her shoulder and looked steadily in her face. There was no evasion in
her eyes, but her eyelids quivered.

"It's all right, Audrey; you never have denied that you love me, and you
can't for the life of you deny it now."

She did not attempt to; for the entrance of the footman with coffee made
denial indecent at the moment, if not impossible. That _deus ex machina_
from below the stage retired, unconscious of the imminent catastrophe he
had averted. But he had brought into the little drama a certain prosaic
element. Coffee and romantic passion do not go hand in hand.

Then it seemed to Audrey that the welcome interval of commonplace lapsed
into a dream, in which Hardy's voice went sounding on in interminable
monologue.

"I shall hear the wind, Audrey