his lips. "Lily--can't I help you?" he exclaimed.

She looked at him gently. "Do you remember what you said to me once?
That you could help me only by loving me? Well--you did love me for a
moment; and it helped me. It has always helped me. But the moment is
gone--it was I who let it go. And one must go on living. Goodbye."

She laid her other hand on his, and they looked at each other with a kind
of solemnity, as though they stood in the presence of death. Something
in truth lay dead between them--the love she had killed in him and could
no longer call to life. But something lived between them also, and leaped
up in her like an imperishable flame: it was the love his love had
kindled, the passion of her soul for his.

In its light everything else dwindled and fell away from her. She
understood now that she could not go forth and leave her old self with
him: that self must indeed live on in his presence, but it must still
continue to be hers.

Selden had retained her hand, and continued to scrutinize her with a
strange sense of foreboding. The external aspect of the situation had
vanished for him as completely as for her: he felt it only as one of
those rare moments which lift the veil from their faces as they pass.

"Lily," he said in a low voice, "you mustn't speak in this way. I can't
let you go without knowing what you mean to do. Things may change--but
they don't pass. You can never go out of my life."

She met his eyes with an illumined look. "No," she said. "I see that now.
Let us always be friends. Then I shall feel safe, whatever happens."

"Whatever happens? What do you mean? What is going to happen?"

She turned away quietly and walked toward the hearth.

"Nothing at present--except that I am very cold, and that before I go you
must make up the fire for me."

She knelt on the hearth-rug, stretching her hands to the embers. Puzzled
by the sudden change in her tone, he mechanically gathered a handful of
wood from the basket and tossed it on the fire. As he did so, he noticed
how thin her hands looked against the rising light of the flames. He saw
too, under the loose lines of her dress, how the curves of her figure had
shrunk to angularity; he remembered long afterward how the red play of
the flame sharpened the depression of her nostrils, and intensified the
blackness of the shadows which struck up from her cheekbones to her eyes.
She knelt there for a few moments in silence; a silence which he dare