anet; it would burlesque
the situation.

"Your going away made me quite sure," he added simply.
"I can never do without you altogether again. Instead I
want to possess you altogether." He bent his fine face
to the level of hers, and took both her hands in his.
Elfrida thought that by that light he looked strangely
young.

She slipped her hands away, but did not move, He was
still very close to her--she could feel his breath upon
her hair.

"Oh no!" she said. "Marriage is so absurd!" and immediately
it occurred to her that she might have put this more
effectively. "Cela n'est pas bien dit!" she thought.

"Let us sit down together and talk about it," he answered
gently, and drew her toward the little sofa in the corner.

"But--I am afraid--there is nothing more to say. And in
a quarter of an hour I must go."

Cardiff smiled masterfully. "I could marry you, little
one, in a quarter of an hour," he said.

But at the end of that time Lawrence Cardiff found himself
very far indeed from the altar, and more enlightened
perhaps than he had ever been before about the radicalism
of certain modern sentiments concerning it. She would
change, he averred; might he be allowed to hope that she
would change, and to wait--months, years? She would never
change, Elfrida avowed, it was useless--quite useless--to
think of that. The principle had too deep a root in her
being--to tear it up would be to destroy her whole joy
in life, she said, leaving Cardiff to wonder vaguely what
she meant.

"I will wait," he said, as she rose to go; "but you will
come back with me now, and we will write a book--some
other book--together."

The girl laughed gaily. "All alone by myself I must do
it," she answered. "And I must do _this_ book. You will
approve it when it is done. I am not afraid."

He had her hands again. "Elfrida," he threatened, "if
you go on the stage to-night in the costume I see so
graphically advertised--an Austrian hussar, isn't it?--I
will attend. I will take a box," he added, wondering at
his own brutality. But by any means he must prevail.

Elfrida turned a shade paler. "You will not do that,"
she said gravely. "Good-by. Thank you for having come to
persuade me to give this up. And I wish I could do what
you would like. But it is quite, quite impossible." She
bent over him and touched his forehead lightly with her
lips. "Good-by," she said again, and was gone.

An hour later he was on his way back to town. As the