o her mind. Her face turned red, then pale;
with a sharp movement she drew away her hand.

"You want to marry me?" she said in a slow, amazed voice.

Before the note of blank, undisguised incredulity, Milbanke shrank into
himself.

"Yes," he said hurriedly--"yes; that is my desire. I know that perhaps
it may--may seem incongruous. You are very young; and I----"

He hesitated with a painful touch of embarrassment. At the hesitation,
Clodagh's voice broke forth.

"But I don't want to marry," she cried; "I don't want to marry--any
one."

There was a sharp, half-frightened note audible in her voice. For the
moment, her whole attitude was that of the inexperienced being who
clings instinctively to the rock of present things, and obstinately
refuses to be cast into the sea of future possibilities. For the
moment, she was blind to the instrument that was forcing her towards
those possibilities. To her immature mind it was the choice between the
known and the unknown. Then suddenly and accidentally her eyes came
back to Milbanke's face, and the personal element in the choice
assailed her abruptly.

"Oh, I couldn't!" she cried involuntarily--"I couldn't!--I couldn't!"

She did not intend to hurt him; but cruelty is the prerogative of the
young, and she failed to see that he winced before the decisive honesty
of her words.

"Am I so--so very distasteful?" he asked in a low, unsteady voice.

She looked at him in silence. It was the inevitable clash of youth and
age. She was warm-hearted, she was capable of generous action; but
before all else, she was young--the triumphant inheritor of the ages.
Life stretched before her, while it lay behind him. She looked at him;
and as she looked a wave of revolt--a strong, sudden sense of her
individual right to happiness--surged through her.

"Oh, I couldn't!" she cried again--"I couldn't!"

And before Milbanke could reply--before he had time to comprehend the
purport of her words--she had turned and fled in the direction of the
house, leaving him standing as he was, dazed and petrified.

Upward along the path, Clodagh ran. Her impulse towards flight had been
childish, and her thoughts as she sped forward were as unreasonable and
confused as a child's. She was vaguely, blindly filled with a desire to
escape--from she knew not what; to evade--she knew not what. Her one
clear thought was that the prop upon which she had leaned in these days
of sorrow and despair had unaccounta