er a great lilac tree in full purple bloom. She
moved to it and sat down, but Nap remained upon his feet, watching
her still.

The air was laden with perfume--the wonderful indescribable essences of
spring. Away in the distance, faintly heard, arose the bleating of lambs.
Near at hand, throned among the purple flowers above their heads, a
thrush was pouring out the rapture that thrilled his tiny life. The whole
world pulsed to the one great melody--the universal, wordless song. Only
the man and the woman were silent as intruders in a sacred place.

Anne moved at last. She looked up very steadily, and spoke. "It seems
like holy ground," she said.

Her voice was hushed, yet it had in it a note of pleading. Her eyes
besought him.

And in answer Nap leaned down with a sudden, tigerish movement and laid
his hand on hers. "What have I to do with holiness?" he said. "Anne, come
down from that high pedestal of yours! I'm tired of worshipping a
goddess. I want a woman--a woman! I shall worship you none the less
because I hold you in my arms."

It was done. The spell was broken. Those quick, passionate words had
swept away her last hope of escape. She was forced to meet him face to
face, to meet him and to do battle.

For a long second she sat quite still, almost as if stunned. Then sharply
she turned her face aside, as one turns from the unbearable heat and
radiance when the door of a blast-furnace is suddenly opened.

"Oh, Nap," she said, and there was a sound of heart-break in her words,
"What a pity! What a pity!"

"Why?" he demanded fiercely. "I have the right to speak--to claim my own.
Are you going to deny it--you who always speak the truth?"

"You have no right," she answered, still with her face averted. "No man
has ever the faintest right to say to another man's wife what you have
just said to me."

"And you think I will give you up," he said, "for that?"

She did not at once reply. Only after a moment she freed her hands from
his hold, and the action seemed to give her strength. She spoke, her
voice very clear and resolute. "I am not going to say anything unkind to
you. You have already borne too much for my sake. But--you must know that
this is the end of everything. It is the dividing of the ways--where we
must say good-bye."

"Is it?" he said. He looked down at her with his brief, thin-lipped
smile. "Then--if that's so--look at me--look at me, Anne, and tell me
that you don't love me!"

She made an