g thing.

She rose, holding the manuscript loosely in her clasped hands, and he
half thought that she was going to give it back to him. He took it
from her and threw it on the window-seat, and held her hands together
for an instant in his own. He looked down at them, longing to stoop
and kiss them, but forebore, because of his great love for her, and
let them go. He went out quickly. He had sufficient self-command to
find Kitty and thank her and take his leave.

As the door closed on him Lucia heard herself calling him back, with
what intention she hardly knew, unless it were to return his poems.
"Keith," she said softly--"Keith." But even to her own senses it was
less a name than a sound that began in a sob and ended in a sigh.

Kitty found her standing in the window-place where he had left her.
"Has anything happened?" she asked.

"I asked him to marry me, Kitty, and he wouldn't. That was all."

"Are you sure you did, dear? From the look of him I should have said
it was the other way about."

CHAPTER LXXV

"I don't know what to think of it, Kitty. What do you think?"

"I think you've been playing with fire, dear. With the divine fire.
It's the most dangerous of all, and you've got your little fingers
burnt."

"Like Horace. He once said the burnt critic dreads the divine fire.
I'm not a critic."

"That you most certainly are not."

"Still I used to understand him; and now I can't. I can't make it out
at all."

"There's only one thing," said Kitty, musing till an inspiration came.
"You haven't seen him for more than three years, and you can't tell
what may have happened in between. He _may_ have got entangled with
another woman."

Kitty would not have hazarded this conjecture if she had not believed
it plausible. But she dwelt on it with a beneficent intention. No
other theory, she opined, would so effectually turn and rout the
invading idea of Keith Rickman.

Kitty was for once mistaken in her judgement, not having all the
evidence before her. The details which would have thrown light on the
situation were just those which Lucia preferred to keep to herself.
All that the benevolent Kitty had achieved was to fill her friend's
mind with a new torment. Lucia had dreaded Rickman's coming; she had
lost all sense of security in his presence. Still she had understood
him. And now she felt that her very understanding was at fault; that
something troubled the fine light she had always viewed him in. W