shed and glittered on the silver ornaments of
her dress; her neck and arms, with their burden of jewels, gleamed like
porcelain in the semi-darkness outside the halo of his student lamp. And
he saw that her dark hair hung low behind in graceful folds as he had
once admired it. He stood a little apart, and she noted his traveling
clothes and the various signs of a journey about the room.

"You may be glad to see me," she remarked, looking at him with a smile.
"You don't look it."

"I am anxious to hear your news," he answered. "I am convinced that you
have something important to say to me."

"Supposing," she answered, still looking at him steadily, "supposing
I were to say that I had no object in coming here at all--that it was
merely a whim? What should you say then?"

"I should take the liberty," he answered quietly, "of doubting the
evidence of my senses."

There was a moment's silence. She felt his aloofness. It awoke in her
some of the enthusiasm with which this mission itself had failed to
inspire her. This man was measuring his strength against hers.

"It was not altogether a whim," she said, her eyes falling from his,
"and yet--now I am here--it does not seem easy to say what was in my
mind."

He glanced towards the clock.

"I fear," he said, "that it may sound ungallant, but in case this
somewhat mysterious mission of yours is of any importance I had better
perhaps tell you that in twenty minutes I must leave to catch the Scotch
mail."

She rose at once to her feet, and swept her cloak haughtily around her.

"I have made a mistake," she said. "Be so good as to pardon my
intrusion. I shall not trouble you again."

She was half-way across the room. She was at the door, her hand was upon
the handle. He was white to the lips, his whole frame was shaking with
the effort of intense repression. He kept silence, till only a flutter
of her cloak was to be seen in the doorway. And then the cry which he
had tried so hard to stifle broke from his lips.

"Lucille! Lucille!"

She hesitated, and came back--looking at him, so he thought, with
trembling lips and eyes soft with unshed tears.

"I was a brute," he murmured. "I ought to be grateful for this chance of
seeing you once more, of saying good-bye to you."

"Good-bye!" she repeated.

"Yes," he said gravely. "It must be good-bye. I have a great work before
me, and it will cut me off completely from all association with your
world and your friends. Somet