ast there was a silence, and it said so much more than either had said
that it scarce needed his final words. "I've written to you several
times."

"Written to me? I've never had your letters."

"I never sent them. I burned them up."

"Ah," laughed Isabel, "it was better that you should do that than I!"

"I thought you wouldn't care for them," he went on with a simplicity
that touched her. "It seemed to me that after all I had no right to
trouble you with letters."

"I should have been very glad to have news of you. You know how I hoped
that--that--" But she stopped; there would be such a flatness in the
utterance of her thought.

"I know what you're going to say. You hoped we should always remain good
friends." This formula, as Lord Warburton uttered it, was certainly flat
enough; but then he was interested in making it appear so.

She found herself reduced simply to "Please don't talk of all that"; a
speech which hardly struck her as improvement on the other.

"It's a small consolation to allow me!" her companion exclaimed with
force.

"I can't pretend to console you," said the girl, who, all still as
she sat there, threw herself back with a sort of inward triumph on
the answer that had satisfied him so little six months before. He was
pleasant, he was powerful, he was gallant; there was no better man than
he. But her answer remained.

"It's very well you don't try to console me; it wouldn't be in your
power," she heard him say through the medium of her strange elation.

"I hoped we should meet again, because I had no fear you would attempt
to make me feel I had wronged you. But when you do that--the pain's
greater than the pleasure." And she got up with a small conscious
majesty, looking for her companions.

"I don't want to make you feel that; of course I can't say that. I only
just want you to know one or two things--in fairness to myself, as it
were. I won't return to the subject again. I felt very strongly what I
expressed to you last year; I couldn't think of anything else. I tried
to forget--energetically, systematically. I tried to take an interest in
somebody else. I tell you this because I want you to know I did my duty.
I didn't succeed. It was for the same purpose I went abroad--as far
away as possible. They say travelling distracts the mind, but it didn't
distract mine. I've thought of you perpetually, ever since I last saw
you. I'm exactly the same. I love you just as much, and everything I