tudy to study poor lonely me? Say you will never
despise me, when you get older, for this episode in our lives. But you
will,--I know you will! All men do, when they have been attracted in
their unsuspecting youth, as I have attracted you. I ought to have kept
my resolve.'

'What was that?'

'To bear anything rather than draw you from your high purpose; to be like
the noble citizen of old Greece, who, attending a sacrifice, let himself
be burnt to the bone by a coal that jumped into his sleeve rather than
disturb the sacred ceremony.'

'But can I not study and love both?'

'I hope so,--I earnestly hope so. But you'll be the first if you do, and
I am the responsible one if you do not.'

'You speak as if I were quite a child, and you immensely older. Why, how
old do you think I am? I am twenty.'

'You seem younger. Well, that's so much the better. Twenty sounds
strong and firm. How old do you think I am?'

'I have never thought of considering.' He innocently turned to
scrutinize her face. She winced a little. But the instinct was
premature. Time had taken no liberties with her features as yet; nor had
trouble very roughly handled her.

'I will tell you,' she replied, speaking almost with physical pain, yet
as if determination should carry her through. 'I am
eight-and-twenty--nearly--I mean a little more, a few months more. Am I
not a fearful deal older than you?'

'At first it seems a great deal,' he answered, musing. 'But it doesn't
seem much when one gets used to it.'

'Nonsense!' she exclaimed. 'It _is_ a good deal.'

'Very well, then, sweetest Lady Constantine, let it be,' he said gently.

'You should not let it be! A polite man would have flatly contradicted
me. . . . O I am ashamed of this!' she added a moment after, with a
subdued, sad look upon the ground. 'I am speaking by the card of the
outer world, which I have left behind utterly; no such lip service is
known in your sphere. I care nothing for those things, really; but that
which is called the Eve in us will out sometimes. Well, we will forget
that now, as we must, at no very distant date, forget all the rest of
this.'

He walked beside her thoughtfully awhile, with his eyes also bent on the
road. 'Why must we forget it all?' he inquired.

'It is only an interlude.'

'An interlude! It is no interlude to me. O how can you talk so lightly
of this, Lady Constantine? And yet, if I were to go away from here, I
might,