t a few words," Mr. Cruxhall persisted. "We'll have a bottle of
champagne, eh?"

"You will excuse me, I am sure," Tavernake replied, "when I tell you
that it would not be correct on my part to discuss my trip until after I
have handed in my report to the company. I am very glad to have seen you
again, Mrs. Gardner."

"But you are not going!" she exclaimed, in dismay.

"I have left Mr. Pritchard alone," Tavernake answered.

Elizabeth smiled, and waved her hand to the solitary figure.

"Our friend Mr. Pritchard again," she remarked. "Well, it is really a
curious meeting, isn't it? I wonder,"--she lifted her head to his and
her eyes called him closer to hers--"have you forgotten everything?"

He pointed over the roofs of the houses. His back was to the river and
he pointed westward.

"I have been in a country where one forgets," he answered. "I think
that I have thrown the knapsack of my follies away. I think that it
is buried. There are some things which I do not forget, but they are
scarcely to be spoken of."

"You are a strange young man," she said. "Was I wrong, or were you not
once in love with me?"

"I was terribly in love with you," Tavernake confessed.

"Yet you tore up my cheque and flung yourself away when you found out
that my standard of morals was not quite what you had expected," she
murmured. "Haven't you got over that quixoticism a little, Leonard?"

He drew a deep sigh.

"I am thankful to say," he declared, earnestly, "that I have not got
over it, that, if anything, my prejudices are stronger than ever."

She sat for a moment quite still, and her face had become hard and
expressionless. She was looking past him, past the line of lights, out
into the blue darkness.

"Somehow," she said, softly, "I always prayed that you might remember.
You were the one true thing I had ever met, you were in earnest. It is
past, then?"

"It is past," Tavernake answered, bravely.

The music of a Hungarian waltz came floating down to them. She half
closed her eyes. Her head moved slowly with the melody. Tavernake looked
away.

"Will you come and see me just once?" she asked, suddenly. "I am staying
at the Delvedere, in Forty-Second Street."

"Thank you very much," Tavernake replied. "I do not know how long I
shall be in New York. If I am here for a few days, I shall take my
chance at finding you at home."

He bowed, and returned to Pritchard, who welcomed him with a quiet
smile.

"You're wise, Tavern