will not--good-bye--I must go now. Good-bye, Andrea,--it is late--let
me go.'

She drew her hands out of the young man's clasp, and, successfully
throwing off the dangerous languor that was creeping over her, she
prepared to rise.

'Then why did you come?' he asked almost roughly, and preventing her
from doing so.

Slight as was the force he used, she frowned. She paused before
answering.

'I came,' she said in measured accents and looking her lover full in the
eyes--'I came because you asked me. For the sake of the love that was
once between us, for the manner in which that love was broken and for
the long and unexplained silence of my absence I had not the heart to
refuse your invitation. Besides, I wanted to say what I have said: that
I am no longer yours--that I never can be again--never. That is what I
wanted to tell you, honestly and frankly, to save you and myself all
painful disillusionment, all danger or bitterness in the future.--Do you
understand?'

Andrea bowed his head almost to her knee in silence. She stroked his
hair with a familiar gesture of old.

'And then,' she went on in a voice that thrilled him to the heart's
core--'and then--I wanted to tell you--that I love you--love you as much
as ever: that you are still the heart of my heart and that I will be the
fondest of sisters to you, the best of friends--do you understand?'

Andrea made no reply. She took his head between her hands and raised it,
forcing him to look her in the face.

'Do you understand?' she repeated in a still lower, sweeter tone. Her
eyes under the shadow of the long lashes were suffused with a pure and
tender light, her lips were slightly open and trembling.

'No; you never loved me, and you do not love me now!' Andrea burst out
at last, pulling Elena's hands from his temples and drawing away from
her, for he was sensible of the fire that was kindling in his veins
under the mere gaze of those eyes, and his regret at having lost
possession of this fairest of women grew more bitter and poignant than
before. 'No, you never loved me. You had the heart to strike your love
dead at a blow--treacherously almost--just when it had reached its
supremest height. You ran away, you deserted me, left me alone in my
bewilderment, my misery, while I was still blinded by your promises. You
never loved me--neither then nor now. And now, after such a long
absence, so full of mystery, so silent and inexorable, after I have
wasted the bloom o