eyes.

"You might have spared me that also," she exclaimed. "You are
determined to humiliate me, to make me remember that hateful afternoon
in my rooms--oh, I can say it if I like--when I kissed you. I knew then
that sooner or later you would make up your mind that it was your duty
to ask me to marry you. Only you might have done it by letter. It
would have been kinder. Never mind. You have purged your conscience,
and you have got your answer. Now let us go."

Brooks looked at her for a moment amazed beside himself with wonder and
self-reproach.

"Mary," he said, quietly, "I give you my word that nothing which I have
said this evening has the least connection with that afternoon. I give
you my word that not for a moment have I thought of it in connection
with what I have said to you to-night."

She looked at him steadfastly, and her eyes were full of things which he
could not understand.

"When did you make up your mind--to ask me this?"

He pointed to the little table where they had been sitting.

Only a few minutes ago. I confess it was an impulse. I think that I
realized as we sat there how dear you had grown to me, Mary--how dull
life was without you."

"You say these things to me," she exclaimed, "when all the time you love
another woman."

He started a little. She smiled bitterly as she saw the shadow on his
face.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," she said, deliberately, "that you love Sybil Caroom. Is it
not true?"

His head drooped a little. He had never asked himself even so much as
this. He was face to face now with all the concentrated emotions which
lately had so much disturbed his life. The problem which he had so
sedulously avoided was forced upon him ruthlessly, with almost barbaric
simplicity.

"I do not know," he answered, vaguely. "I have never asked myself. I
do not wish to ask myself. Why do you speak of her? She is not of our
world, the world to which I want to belong. I want to forget her."

"You are a little mad to-night, my friend," Mary said. "To-morrow you
will feel differently. If Sybil Caroom cares for you, what does it
matter which world she belongs to? She is not the sort of girl to be
bound by old-fashioned prejudices. But I do not understand you at all
to-night. You are not yourself. I think that you are--a little cruel."
"Cruel?" he repeated.

Her face darkened.

"Oh, it is only natural," she said, with a note of suppressed passion in
her how tone. "It is just the ac