he summer, for a long time.
I did not expect to see you again. Two or three times I started to
the station. I have stayed until now because it seemed best after
all to speak to you once more. This is my reason for being here
to-night; and it is the only apology I can offer to myself or to
you for what I am doing."

There was a sad and bitter vehemence in her words; she quivered
with passion.

"Isabel," he said more urgently, "there is nothing I am not
prepared to tell you."

When she spoke again, it was with difficulty and everything seemed
to hang upon her question:

"Does any one else know?"

His reply was immediate:

"No one else knows."

"Have you every reason to believe this?"

"I have every reason to believe this."

"You kept your secret well," she said with mournful irony. "You
reserved it for the one person whom it could most injure: my
privilege is too great!"

"It is true," he said.

She turned and looked at him. She felt the depth of conviction
with which he spoke, yet it hurt her. She liked his dignity and
his self-control, and would not have had them less; yet she
gathered fresh bitterness from the fact that he did not lose them.
But to her each moment disclosed its new and uncontrollable
emotions; as words came, her mind quickly filled again with the
things she could not say. She now went on:

"I am forced to ask these questions, although I have no right to
ask them and certainly I have no wish. I have wanted to know
whether I could carry out the plan that has seemed to me best for
each of us. If others shared your secret, I could not do this. I
am going away--I am going in the morning. I shall remain away a
long time. Since we have been seen together here to-night as
usual, no one suspects now that for us everything has become
nothing. While I am away, no one can have the means of finding
this out. Before I return, there will be changes--there may be
many changes. If we meet with indifference then, it will be
thought that we have become indifferent, one of us, or both of us:
I suppose it will be thought to be you. There will be comment,
comment that will be hard to stand; but this will be the quietest
way to end everything--as far as anything can ever be ended."

"Whatever you wish! I leave it all to you."

She did not pause to heed his words:

"This will spare me the linking of my name with yours any further
just now; it will spare me all that I should suffer if th