hear him yet, she gathered up her force and hurried on piteously.
"Please don't think that I have anything against you, that you are in
the least to blame. You have been chivalrous and kind throughout. The
responsibility must all rest on my shoulders."

He winced at the pain she was visibly enduring, the expression of her
eyes, the convulsive catch of her breath.

"But what on earth has come between us?" he exclaimed, in a sort of dull
despair. He felt no joyous glow at the return of his liberty. The
occasion seemed too miserably tragic, and his human association with
her had made him care for her enough to be deeply distressed at the
agony under which she was labouring. Even now, if it could have made her
happy, if it could have induced her to withdraw all she had said, he
would have taken her hand tenderly, and melted away every cloud between
them. "Yesterday all was well, and to-day----" He gave a gesture of
blank bewilderment.

"I have arrived at the conviction that we are not suited for each other,
that I am not the sort of woman to make your life all that it should
be."

"Oh, come," he said. "I am surprised to find such morbid nonsense
running in your head."

She was taken aback at this resistance on his part; and she rightly set
it down to pure fraternal consideration for her. She let herself go now;
best to give her explanation at full length.

"It is not a sudden impulse I have yielded to, or a passing wave of
depression," she urged, trying to conjure up the ghost of a smile again.
"Believe me, I have seen the right path before me only after the deepest
consideration."

He interrupted her with a gesture.

"But what has come between us?" he insisted again. "You do not say you
have ceased to love me."

With a great effort she looked straight at him. "Yes," she said with
steady voice, and no physical flinching. "I have ceased to love you. I
searched into my heart before it was too late, and I found my affections
had gone to another."

A flash of understanding seemed to come to him. "Mr. Shanner!" he
exclaimed.

She averted her eyes. "He was my friend before I knew you," she pleaded,
as if driven to defence.

"I see now you are perfectly serious," he murmured, hurt at last, and
firmly believing her. "Does love come and go in women with such
momentary capriciousness?"

"Perhaps," she said with a weird dreaminess. "It comes and goes like the
blossoming of a flower in the sunlight--beautiful for th