The old questions that had haunted him for six months, surged up and he was almost choked with the immanence of the answer to them. Had there come the change that they had talked about? Had she reached the decision that he had so long been waiting for?

[39]

At length she spoke, and the contralto warmth and color of her voice were subdued to a neutral monotone. “I could have sent you word,” she said. “But I have no excuse to offer, and prefer not to explain.”

“You know what I’ve been hoping for—and waiting for,” he said with difficulty. “You have not forgotten that last night in Washington Square?”

“No. And you have not forgotten the point I then insisted upon—that I wanted to go off, alone, to examine myself and try to learn whether I was really the sort of woman you declared me to be.”

“I remember. And now that you have been away, and come back?”

Her voice was steady. “I have learned I am not that kind of woman.”

“No?”

[40]“I have learned that I do not look upon life—that is life for myself—in the way you thought I would.”

[40]

“Just what do you mean?”

“I know now that I am by nature more worldly than you believed me.”

He grew suddenly sick at her even words. “I was hoping that you would have decided that you cared for me.”

“I am and always shall be grateful to you for the things you did for me, and I shall always appreciate your high opinion of the qualities you believed to exist in me. You were kind and generous—and I shall never forget.”

“But you have no other feeling—toward me?”

She shook her head.

“Then this is final—as far as my hopes are concerned,” he whispered dryly. He was dazed; too dazed to note that she had grown even more pale than a few moments before and that her hands were gripping folds of the velvet gown.

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