look how young you are!"

"Why, how young do you think I am?" he interrupted, looking down at her with a grave smile. "As I said just now, you seem to regard me as if I were a boy. I think I am as old as you—older. How old are you—you look like a girl?"

"I am twenty-two—but what has that to do with it? How can you turn aside, trifle——"

"And I am twenty-five," he said, with an involuntary sigh. "So you see I am your senior. But they say a woman is always ten years older than a man of the same age. I suppose that is why you always have us under your thumbs. No, I'm not trifling. Don't you see that I am fighting for time, that I am trying not to think, that I am putting the thing from me as far as I can, even for a few minutes. Immediately you go, I shall have to face it all again, and—alone. You have been very good to me; you don't think I am ungrateful, because I—I play the fool?"

"Don't play it any longer, then," said Celia, earnestly. "Make up your mind to do the right thing. Why should you ruin yourself? But I have said that before. You know I am right; you say you are grateful because I have stopped you from——" She shuddered, and her hand closed still more tightly on the revolver. "Promise me——"

He looked at her wistfully; but he shook his head.

"I can't do that," he said, in a low voice. "Here, I see I shall have to put the case to you." He sank into the chair and leant his head on his hand, and, still with his eyes covered, he continued, in little more than a whisper: "Supposing there was someone you cared for more than anything else in the world, more than life, more than honour. Is there someone?"

Celia did not blush, and without a sign of embarrassment, shook her head.

"I beg your pardon for asking. I am sorry there is not; because, you see, you would understand more readily. Well, there is someone I care for like that, and I am doing this to save her—I mean him," he corrected quickly, "from all that I should suffer if I stood up and faced the music, as you want me to do."

"Whoever she is, she is not worth it," said Celia, her voice thrilling with indignation and scorn.

"I said 'him,'" he corrected, almost inaudibly.

"You said 'her,' first," retorted Celia. "Of course, it's a woman—and a wicked, a selfish one. No woman 

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