Berkeley Square! She let the blind drop,
the curtain fall into its place.

Sir Seymour had got up and was standing by the fire. She saw him in the
distance, that faithful old man, and she wished she could love him. She
clenched her hands, trying to will herself to love him and to want to
take him into her intimate life. But she could not bring herself to go
back to him just then, and she did not know what she was going to do.
Perhaps she would have left the room had not an interruption occurred.
She heard the door open and saw Murgatroyd and the footman bringing in
tea.

"You can turn up another light, Murgatroyd," she said, instantly
recovering herself sufficiently to speak in a natural voice.

And she walked back down the room to Sir Seymour, carrying with her a
little silver vase full of very large white carnations.

"These are the flowers I was speaking about," she said to him. "Have you
ever seen any so large before? They look almost unnatural, don't they?"

When the servants were gone she said:

"You must think me half crazy, Seymour."

"No; but I don't understand what has happened."

"_I_ have happened, I and my miserable disgusting mind and brain and
temperament. That's all!"

"You are very severe on yourself."

"Tell me--have you ever been severe on me in your mind? You don't really
know me. Nobody does or ever will. But you know me what is called well.
Have you ever been mentally severe, hard on me?"

"Yes, sometimes," he answered gravely.

She felt suddenly rather cold, and she knew that his answer had
surprised her. She had certainly expected him to say, "Never, my dear!"

"I thought so," she said.

And, while saying it, she was scarcely conscious that she was telling a
lie.

"But you must not think that such thoughts about you ever make the least
difference in my feeling for you," he said. "That has never changed,
never could change."

"Oh--I don't know!" she said in a rather hard voice. "Everything can
change, I think."

"No."

"I suppose you have often disapproved of things I have done?"

"Sometimes I have."

"Tell me, if--if things had been different, and you and I had come
together, what would you have done if you had disapproved of my
conduct?"

"What is the good of entering upon that?"

"Yes; do tell me! I want to know."

"I hope I should find the way to hold a woman who was mine," he said,
with a sort of decisive calmness, but with a great temperateness.

"But if you