them, not quite correctly perhaps, but to his
own satisfaction.

"Listen to me," he said, in the gentlest
tones within the compass of his voice. "I have
a right — have I not?—to ask you, to know what
is your meaning towards me? What did you
bring me here for? Remember the words I
have spoken to you, not once only, or twice;
remember the story I told you on the balcony
yonder; remember the tone you have
occasionally adopted in all your levity, and then do
not attempt to deny my right to speak as I am
speaking, and to demand your answer."

"You — you found me alone here — in my
own house — and ——"

"Absurd!" he cried. "You are talking
nonsense, and you know it. Did you not intend
me to understand that I should find you alone?
Did your note, your summons (I tore it up, but
you remember the words as well as I do), mean
anything else? Do you not know this is all
folly? There is no need to play with me. I am
a sure prize, or victim, which you please; you
know that well enough, and I must know which
you do please, for this is, as I said before, a
crisis for me. Which is it?" he said, and he
held her hands more tightly, and looked at her
with a pale face. "Which is it? Mere
coquetry — a dangerous game with a man like me,
I warn you — a game you won't find it possible
to play; or — or the deep, deep love of a life-
time — the devotion which will never swerve or
falter — the passion which will blot out from
your knowledge or your fears everything
beyond itself."

Weak, imaginative, without principle, easily
ruled by strength, though a despot to weakness,
the woman he addressed listened to him
like one in a dream. Not until afterwards did
a sense of being tricked and trapped come to
her. Had her demeanour towards Routh
really implied all this? Had she yielded to the
rapacity for admiration, to the thirst for
conquest, which had always dominated in her
nature, once too often, and far too completely?
This was precisely what she had done, and she
had fallen into the hands of a stronger being than
herself. In a blind, vague, groping kind of
way she felt this, and felt that she could not
help or deliver herself, and felt it with something
like fear, even while her imagination and
her vanity were intoxicated by the mingling of
defiance and pleading in his words, in his tones,
and in his looks.

"You and I," he went on, "would say to
others, would say to each other in some of our
moods, or would have said when first we met,
that no such thing as this all-sufficing love exists,
but each of us knows well that it does, and may,
and shall be ours! This is what I mean. Again
I ask you, what is your meaning in all this?"

"I don't know," she replied, releasing her
hands, and rising. He allowed her to pass him,
and to walk to the fireplace. She stood there,
her radiant figure glittering in the lustre of the
fire and the wax-lights. She stood there, her
head bent, her hands before her, the fingers
interlaced. After a minute, Routh followed her,
and stood before her.

"Then you will not answer me — you will not
tell me what your meaning was in sending for
me to-night?" There was tenderness in his
tone now, and the slight inflection of a sense of
injury which rarely fails with a woman.

"Yes," she said, looking up full at him, "I
will tell you. I wanted to let you know that I
think of going away!"

"Going away!" cried Routh, in unbounded
amazement—" going away! What do you
mean?"

"Just what I say," she replied, recovering
herself, and resuming her usual tone and manner
as soon as he released her from the spell of his
earnestness and passion — "I am going away. I
don't treat you quite so badly as you try to
make out, you see, or I should not tell you about
it, or consult you, or anything, but just go
—go right away, you know, and make an end
of it."

Routh's stern face flushed, and then darkened
with a look which Harriet had learned to know,
but which Mrs. P. Ireton Bembridge had never
seen. She did not see it now, and continued:

"I sent for you to tell you this. I don't like
the place; I'm tired of it. It's too small, and yet
every one comes here, and I'm talked of. Ah,
you sneer! Well, I know. I remember all I
have said about that, but it is one thing to be
talked of in London or Paris, and quite another
to be the object of the daily curiosity and the
malice—— "

"You mean the envy, don't you?" said
Routh.

"No I don't, I mean the malice; well, the
envy, or the malice, or only the observation, if
you like, of always the same people, whom I
meet in always the same places. That is a part
of my reason, but only a part. I don't like
Mr. Felton, I don't like Mr. Dallas; less than
any people in the world I choose to have them
to spy and overlook me; and — and — I don't
want to be here when that man comes."

Routh stood before her quite silent.

"You know — you remember," she said, with a
smile, "Arthur Felton. By-the-by, you need
not make faces about my wearing his photograph
any more, for I've lost it — lost it before I
got home yesterday. In fact, I fancy he is in some
trouble — perhaps in some disgrace — and I have
no fancy for being here when he arrives, to have
him quarrelling with me if I avoid him, and
his father regarding me with horror if I don't;
so ——" and here she knelt on the white rug and
stretched out her hands to the fire, which shone
reflected in her upraised eyes — "so I am
going to —— " She paused, tantalising him.

"To —— ?" he repeated after her, almost in
a whisper.

"To London," she said; and laughed and
looked at him, and rose. "Now sit down, and
let us talk it over, and be reasonable."

Still quite silent, Routh obeyed her. His
manner, his look was changed. He was thoughtful;
but an air of relief had come upon him, as