happiness through
another's eyes."

He went away, and he said to himself, "She does not know what love
means."

Night after night found him at the theatre, and night after night saw
him seek at least a few moments' talk with her; and always he came
away thinking her a colder woman than any of the statues she was so
fond of speaking about. In her conversation there was no personality;
and although her intellect pleased him, the lack of anything else
annoyed him in equal proportion. And yet he loved the woman whom he
was going to marry. She was a sweet woman--"God never made a sweeter,"
he told himself a hundred times a day. He had wooed her and won her,
and wished to make her his wife.

She _was_ a sweet woman. For weeks now she had heard harsh rumors and
evil things of him that made her heart ache, but she had given no
sign, nor would she have ever done so had not her friends goaded her
to the point. She hears the light footstep coming along the corridor
toward her, and she knows that it comes this morning at her especial
call. She sees the bonny face and feels the light kiss on her cheek.
Heaven forgive her if she inwardly wonder if these lips she loves have
last rested on another woman's face!

"Roy," she says, stealing up to him and laying one of her lovely round
arms about his neck, "tell me, dear, if you have ceased to love me--if
you would rather--rather break our engagement? Because, dear, better a
parting now, before it is too late, than a lifelong misery afterward."
There are tears in the blue bewitching eyes, and tears in the gentle
voice that he is not slow to feel.

"Florence"--the young man catches her in his arms--"who has--What do
you mean? I have not ceased to love you." All the fair fascination
that has made her so dear to him in the past rushes over him now to
her rescue.

"Then, Roy, why, why--Oh, I cannot say it!" Her pretty head, gold like
his own, falls on his shoulder.

"Look up, love." He is not a coward, whatever else. "You mean to say,
'Why do I, a man professing to love one woman, constantly seek the
society of another?' Do not you?"

She bows her head, her white lids droop. There is a pause so long that
the ticking of the little clock on the mantel seems a noise in the
stillness. He puts her out of his arms, rises, picks up a newspaper,
throws it down, and says, "God help me! I don't know." Then another
pause; and now the ticking of the little clock is fairly riotous.
"Florence, l