he morning another in the
afternoon. What have you to say to such people, Mr. Langham?

Her eyes challenged him magnificently, mostly out of sheer nervousness.
But the face they rested on seemed suddenly to turn to stone before her.
The life died out of it. It grew still and rigid.

'Nothing,' he said quietly. 'Between them and me there is a great
gulf fixed. I watch them pass, and I say to myself: "There are _the
living_--that is how they look, how they speak! Realize once for all
that you have nothing to do with them. Life is theirs--belongs to
_them_. You are already outside it. Go your way, and be a spectre among
the active and the happy no longer."'

He leant his back against the gate. Did he see her? Was he conscious of
her at all in this rare impulse of speech which had suddenly overtaken
one of the most withdrawn and silent of human beings? All her airs
dropped off her; a kind of fright seized her; and involuntarily she laid
her hand on his arm.

'Don't--don't--Mr. Langham! Oh, don't say such things! Why should you be
so unhappy? Why should you talk so? Can no one do anything? Why do you
live so much alone? Is there no one you care about?'

He turned. What a vision! His artistic sense absorbed it in an
instant--the beautiful tremulous lip, the drawn white brow. For a moment
he drank in the pity, the emotion of those eyes. Then a movement of such
self-scorn as even he had never felt swept through him. He gently moved
away; her hand dropped.

'Miss Leyburn,' he said, gazing at her, his olive face singularly pale,
'don't waste your pity on me, for Heaven's sake. Some madness made me
behave as I did just now. Years ago the same sort of idiocy betrayed me
to your brother; never before or since. I ask your pardon, humbly,' and
his tone seemed to scorch her, 'that this second fit of ranting should
have seized me in your presence.'

But he could not keep it up. The inner upheaval had gone too far. He
stopped and looked at her--piteously, the features quivering. It was
as though the man's whole nature had for the moment broken up, become
disorganized. She could not bear it. Some ghastly infirmity seemed to
have been laid bare to her. She held out both her hands. Swiftly he
caught them, stooped, kissed them, let them go. It was an extraordinary
scene--to both a kind of lifetime.

Then he gathered himself together by a mighty effort.

'That was _adorable_ of you,' he said with a long breath. 'But I stole
it--I d