ffer? Don't you _care_, Cornelia?"

"Yes, I care," she answered simply. "It _hurts_, but it's going to hurt
a lot more if I stay behind. If we lived together it would be like
trying to piece together the bits of two different puzzles. We don't
fit!"

The simple words expressed the truth with paralysing force. Even at
that bitter moment Guest recognised their truth, and was dumb before it.
He turned aside, his strong jaw working with emotion, powerless to
fight any longer against the rock of Cornelia's will.

Behind him lay the grey city wrapped in its veil of smoke, the tall
spire of the old church rising in picturesque isolation above the line
of the surrounding buildings. It seemed at that moment to stand as a
symbol of the life of the Mother Country, a life fenced in by
convention, by forms and ceremonies sanctified to every Englishman by
centuries of association; forms at which he may at times smile or scoff,
but which he would no sooner demolish than he would tear away the
clustering ivy which clothes his walls. Before him lay the broad river,
its mouth widening to the sea: to that free, untrammelled waste of
waters, which were a fit symbol of that land of the West, whose daughter
could place her liberty even before her love!

There came a sudden stir and movement. A second time the bell clanged
its warning, and the visitors began to stream towards the gangway.
Guest heard the sound of a strangled sob, and felt his own heart beat
with suffocating quickness.

"I--I can't face it," he cried desperately, "I won't take this as an
answer. If I had time I could _make_ you listen to me. I could make
you agree. I shall come after you to New York."

She turned aside, but not so quickly that he did not catch the sudden
light in her eyes, the same involuntary gleam of joy which had greeted
his coming a few minutes before. The sight of that tell-tale signal
made his heart leap, but Cornelia shook her head, and her voice broke in
a low-breathed "Ho! It would be a mistake. Wait here. Wait quietly!
At first it will hurt, but after a while you'll be glad. You'll find
that other things come first. You think now that you will come after
me, but I know you better! You will never come. You'll not want me any
more."

Guest laughed a strained little laugh of excitement and exultation.
Cornelia might preach prudence, and hold fast to her own ideas, but at
least she had not forbidden his coming; had not said in