on't know. Because I wanted to, I expect."

Her eyes fell to the table. She made tiny pellets of bread between
her fingers and placed them one by one in a row, knowing that his
eyes were searching through her. In that little moment, the silence
vibrated with the current of their thoughts. Traill pulled himself
together--laying hand upon anything that came within his reach.

"Look at this knife," he said in a dry voice, picking up the nearest
to him. "Ever seen such a handle? it's shrunk in the wash." The bone
handle of it was bent round, twisted like a ram's horn. "I generally
get this about once a week. It's an old friend by this time."

She looked at it, scarcely seeing, and forced a smile that could not
quite remove the furrow of silent intensity from her brows. Traill
saw that. He could not take his eyes from her face. Her almost
childish passivity was like a slow and heavy poison in his blood.
It crept gradually and gradually through the veins, leaving fire
wherever it touched.

Alexandre came back with the wine, and broke the spell of it. He
spread the change out on the table, and the sound of it then, at that
moment, was like the breaking of a thousand little pieces of glass,
over which his presence walked with clumsy feet.

"Well, what did Mr. Arthur say?" Traill asked when Alexandre had
disappeared again and Berthe had brought them their second course.

Sally looked up and smiled at his encouragement, a smile that lit
through him. He could feel it dancing in his eyes.

"He asked me if I had made up my mind," she replied.

"Made up your mind to marry him?"

"Yes."

The pause was heavy, it seemed to swing against them.

"And you? What did you say?"

He tried to conceal the burning of his interest to know. His voice
was steady--each note of each word quiet, true, subdued; but when
the brain is tautened, vibrating as was his, it gives out of itself
unconsciously. She felt the strain in her mind as well, just as though
a wire, drawn out, were stretched between them. She heard the note,
half-dominant in his speech. However quiet his voice, he could not
dull her ears to that.

"Oh, I told him I couldn't; it was impossible. I don't love him, I
never should love him. How could one take a step like that on no other
basis than wanting a home? What a home it would be! I should be
miserable."

These were her beliefs. She placed love before everything--lifted
it to the altar as you raise a saint and worship