ming back, can't you understand? I'm never coming back,"
she repeated.

The man arose and stood in the doorway.

"Don't say that," he said very quietly. "Not yet. I won't begin, now,
after all these years to make protestations of love. The thing called
Love we've discussed too often already, and without result. Anyway,
that's not the point. We never pretended to be lovers, even when we
were married. We were simply useful, very useful to each other."

Camilla started to interrupt him, but, preventing, he held up his
hand.

"We talked over a certain possibility--one now a reality--before we
were married." He caught the look upon her face. "I don't say it was
ideal. It simply _was_," he digressed slowly in answer, then hurried
on: "That was only five years ago, Eleanor, and we were far from
young." He looked at her, searchingly. "You've not forgotten the
contract we drew up, that stood above the marriage obligation, above
everything, supreme law for you and me?" Instinctively his hand went
to an inner pocket, where the rustle of a paper answered his touch.
"Remember; it's not a favor I ask of you, but the fulfilment of your
own word. Think a moment before you say you'll never return."

Camilla Maurice found an answer very difficult. Had he been angry, or
abusive, it would have been easy; but as it was--

"You overlook the fact of change. A lifetime isn't required for
that."

"I overlook nothing." The man went back to his chair. "You remember,
as well as I, that we considered the problem of change--and laughed at
it. I repeat, we're no longer in swaddling clothes."

"Be that as it may, I tell you the whole world looks different to me
now." The speaker struggled bravely, but the ghastliness of such a
discussion wore on her nerves, and her face twitched. "No power on
earth could make me keep that contract since I've changed."

The suggestion of a smile played about the man's mouth.

"You've succeeded, perhaps, in finding that for which we searched so
long in vain, an aesthetic, non-corporeal love?"

"I refuse to answer a question which was intended as an insult."

The words out of her mouth, the woman regretted them.

"Though quick yourself to take offence, you seem at no great pains to
avoid giving affront to another." The man voiced the reprimand
without the twitch of an eyelid, and finished with another question:
"Have you any reason for doing as you've done, other than the one you
gave?"

"Reason! Reason