just when I
want you most, you deny me even your friendship. What have I done to
deserve such treatment? Is it fair? Is it just?"

Alicia had listened with growing impatience. It was only with difficulty
that she contained herself. Now she interrupted him hotly:

"I broke my engagement with you because I found that you were deceiving
me--just as you deceived others."

"It's a lie!" broke in Underwood. "I may have trifled with others, but I
never deceived you."

Alicia rose and, crossing the room, carelessly inspected one of the
pictures on the wall, a study of the nude by Bouguereau.

"We need not go into that," she said haughtily. "That is all over now. I
came to ask you what this letter--this threat----means. What do you
expect to gain by taking your life unless I continue to be your friend?
How can I be a friend to a man like you? You know what your friendship
for a woman means. It means that you would drag her down to your own
level and disgrace her as well as yourself. Thank God, my eyes are now
opened to your true character. No self-respecting woman could afford to
allow her name to be associated with yours. You are as incapable of
disinterested friendship as you are of common honesty." Coldly she
added: "I hope you quite understand that henceforth my house is closed
to you. If we happen to meet in public, it must be as strangers."

Underwood did not speak. Words seemed to fail him. His face was set and
white. A nervous twitching about the mouth showed the terrible mental
strain which the man was under. In the excitement he had forgotten about
Howard's presence on the divan behind the screen. A listener might have
detected the heavy breathing of the sleeper, but even Alicia herself was
too preoccupied to notice it. Underwood extended his arms pleadingly:

"Alicia--for the sake of Auld Lang Syne!"

"Auld Lang Syne," she retorted. "I want to forget the past. The old
memories are distasteful. My only object in coming here to-night was to
make the situation plain to you and to ask you to promise me not
to--carry out your threat to kill yourself. Why should you kill
yourself? Only cowards do that. Because you are in trouble? That is the
coward's way out. Leave New York. Go where you are not known. You are
still young. Begin life over again, somewhere else." Advancing toward
him, she went on: "If you will do this I will help you. I never want to
see you again, but I'll try not to think of you unkindly. But you