about your dream. I'll say you were afraid lest I
should think you had been faithless to _me_. It would never have
occurred to you if you hadn't seen me again. It will not occur to you
after I am gone. It will be all over by to-morrow."

"Why to-morrow?" He spoke stupidly. Fear had made him stupid. "Why
to-morrow?"

"Because I am going to-morrow."

Then he knew that it was indeed all over. The door which had been open
to him was about to close; and once closed it would never be open to
him again.

"What _must_ you think of me--"

"I think you have done very wrong, and that our talking about it only
makes it worse. And so--I'm sorry--but I must ask you to leave me."

But he did not leave her. "And I must ask you to forgive me," he said
gently.

"I? I have nothing to forgive. You haven't done anything to me. But I
should never forgive you if I thought this foolishness could make one
moment's difference to--to Flossie."

"It never has made any difference to her," he replied coldly, "or to
my feeling for her. I never felt towards any woman as I feel towards
you. It isn't the same thing at all. Heaven knows I thought I cared
enough for her to marry her. But it seems I didn't. That's why I say
it makes no difference to her. Nothing is altered by it. As far as
Flossie is concerned, whether I marry her or not I shall have behaved
abominably. I don't know which is the more dishonourable."

"Don't you?"

"No. I only know which I'm going to do."

She turned her head away. And that turning away was intolerable. It
was the closing of the door.

"Is it so very terrible to you?" he said gently.

He could not see the tears in her eyes, but he heard them in her
voice, and he knew that he had wounded her, Hot in her pride, but in
her tenderness and honour--Lucia's honour.

"To me? I'm not thinking of myself--not of myself at all. How could I
think of myself? I'm thinking of _her_." She turned to him and let her
tears gather in her eyes unheeded. "Don't you see what you've done?"

Oh, yes; he saw very well what he had done. He had taken the
friendship she had given to him to last his life and destroyed it in a
moment, with his own hands. All for the sake of a subtlety, a
fantastic scruple, a question asked, a thing said under some obscure
compulsion. He had been moved by he knew not what insane urgency of
honour. And whatever else he saw he did not see how he could have done
otherwise. The only alternative was to say