Rome. You knew the best, and you showed it to me. You never tried to understand why it was the best, but you never made a mistake."

"Those things are matters of inheritance," he replied, "and cultivation. It was a great joy to me, Marcia, to give you the keys."

"Yes," she repeated, "that is what you did, Reginald--you gave me the keys, and I opened the doors."

"And now," he went on, "you have pushed your way further, much further into the world where men and women think, than I could or should care to follow you. Is it likely to separate us?"

She saw him suddenly through a little mist of tears.

"No!" she exclaimed, "it must not! It shall not!"

"Nevertheless," he persisted, "the thought is in your mind. I cannot alter my life, Marcia. I live to a certain extent by tradition, and by habits which have become too strong to break. There is a great difference in our years and in our outlook upon life. There is much before you, flowers which you may pick and heights which you may climb, which can have no message for me."

"Nothing," Marcia declared fervently, "shall disturb our--our friendship."

"That does not rest with you, dear, but rather with Fate," he replied. "You might control your actions, and I know that you would, but your will, your desires, your temperament, may still lead you in opposite directions. I have been your lover too long to slip easily into the place of your guardian. Hold out your hand, if you will, now, and bid me farewell. Try the other things, and, if they fail you, send for me."

"I shall do nothing of the sort," she objected. "We are both of us much too serious. The only question we are considering is whether you would object to my dining with Mr. Borden and lunching with Mr. Hyde?"

"It would give you an opportunity," he remarked, with a rather grim smile, "of seeing the inside of some other restaurant."

"How understanding you are!" she exclaimed. "Do you know, although I love our dinners here, I sometimes feel as though this room were a little cage, a little corner of the world across the threshold of which you had drawn a chalk line, so that no one of your world or mine might enter. The coming of Mr. Thain was almost like an earthquake."

With every moment it seemed to him that he understood her a little more, and with every moment the pain of it all increased.

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