invited him to share
their laughter, but the smile he gave her was pitiful,
if she could have known it. The strain she had bee putting
upon him, and promised indefinitely to put upon him, was
growing greater than he could bear.

"I am afraid I most ask you to decide," he said. "You
have been telling me two things, dear. One thing with
your lips and another thing with your eyes--and ways of
doing. You tell me that I, must go, but you make it
possible for me to stay. For God's sake let it be one or
the other."

"I am so sorry. We could be friends of a sort, I think,
but I can't marry you."

"You have never told me why."

"Shall I tell you truly, literally--brutally?"

"Of course!"

"Then it is not only because I don't love you--that there
is not for me the common temptation to enter a form of
bondage which, as I see it, is hateful. That is enough,
but it is not all; it is not even the principal thing.
It is"--she hesitated--"it is that--that we are different,
you and I. It would-be preposterous," she went on hastily,
"not to admit that you are infinitely superior--of
course--and cleverer and wiser and more important in the
world. And that will make me absurd in your eyes when I
tell you that my whole life is wrapped up in a sense
which I cannot see or feel that you have at all. You have
much--oh, a great deal--outside of it, and I have nothing.
My life is swayed in obedience to laws that you do not
even know of. You can hardly be my friend, completely.
As your wife I should suffer and you would suffer, in a
false position which could never be altered."

She paused and looked at him seriously, and he felt that
she believed what she had said. She had, at all events,
given him full permission to go. And he was as far from
being able to avail of himself of it as he had been
before--further, for every moment those slender fingers
rested in his made it more impossible to relinquish them,
for always. So, he persisted, with a bitter sense of
failure that would not wholly, honestly recognize itself.

"Is Golightly Ticke your friend--completely?"

"More--pardon me--than you could ever be," she answered
him, undaunted by the contempt in his tone.

There was silence for a moment between them. Elfrida's
wide-eyed gaze wandered appreciatively over the dusky
interior, which for the man beside her barely existed.

"What a lot of English character there is here," she said
softly. "How dignified it is, and conscientiou