an accent of passion, "what am I to you? Just the filling up
of so many hours' amusement--no more! Do you think all my eloquence
would have any chance against one of his cursed words? I might kneel at
your feet from morning until night, and still I should be to you a thing
of naught in comparison with him."

She holds out her hands to him in a little dumb fashion. Her tongue
seems frozen. But he repulses this last attempt at reconciliation.

"It is no good. None! I have no belief in you left, so you can no longer
cajole me. I know that I am nothing to you. Nothing! If," drawing a deep
breath through his closed teeth, "if a thousand years were to go by I
should still be nothing to you if he were near. I give it up. The battle
was too strong for me. I am defeated, lost, ruined."

"You have so arranged it," says she in a low tone, singularly clear. The
violence of his agitation had subdued hers, and rendered her
comparatively calm.

"You must permit me to contradict you. The arrangement is all your own."

"Was it so great a crime to stay last night at Falling?" "There is no
crime anywhere. That you should have made a decision between two men is
not a crime."

"No! I acknowledge I made a decision--but----"

"When did you make it?"

"Last evening--and though you----"

"Oh! no excuses," says he with a frown. "Do you think I desire them?"

He hesitates for a minute or so, and now turns to her abruptly. "Are you
engaged to him finally?"

"No."

"No!" In accents suggestive of surprise so intense as to almost enlarge
into disbelief. "You refused him then?"

"No," says she again. Her heart seems to die within her. Oh, the sense
of shame that overpowers her. A sudden wild, terrible hatred of
Beauclerk takes her into possession. Why, why, had he not given her the
choice of saying yes, instead of no, to that last searching question?

"You mean--that he----" He stops dead short as if not knowing how to
proceed. Then, suddenly, his wrath breaks forth. "And for that
scoundrel, that fellow without a heart, you have sacrificed the best of
you--your own heart! For him, whose word is as light as his oath, you
have flung behind you a love that would have surrounded you to your
dying day. Good heavens! What are women made of? But----" He sobers
himself at once, as if smitten by some sharp remembrance, and, pale with
shame and remorse, looks at her. "Of course," says he, "it is only one
heartbroken, as I am, who would have da