to be over between us--that we are
only to be friends, as they say, in future?"

"I quite see what _you_ mean," he said, his lips perceptibly tightening;
"and that, too, in a certain sense, is what I mean also."

"What!" she exclaimed. "Do you really mean that I am not to be any more
what I have been to you, and that if we meet again it must only be as
ordinary acquaintances, just friends who have known each other a certain
number of years? Surely, Vane, you don't mean that--dear?"

The last word escaped her lips almost involuntarily. She tried to keep
it back, but it got out in spite of herself. It was only the fact that
they were walking on the public highway that prevented her from giving
way altogether to the sense of despair that had come over her. As his
face had changed a few moments before so did hers now, and as she
looked at him he stopped momentarily in his walk.

But the lessons which he had learnt during the last few days, and most
of all during this last night of lonely wandering and desperate
questioning with himself, had ground the moral into his soul so deeply
that not even the sight of her so anxiously longing for just one word
from him to bring them together again, and make them once more as they
had always been--almost since either of them could remember
anything--was strong enough to force him to speak it.

He involuntarily wheeled the bicycle towards the middle of the road, as
though he was afraid to trust himself too near her, and said, speaking
as a man might speak when pronouncing his own death sentence:

"Yes, Enid, that is what I do mean. I mean that there is a great deal
more, something infinitely more serious in what has happened during the
last few days, in what I have learnt and you have been told, than you
seem to have any idea of."

Enid made a gesture as though she would interrupt him, but he went on
almost hotly:

"Listen to me, Enid, and then judge me as you please--only listen to me.
Four days ago, after I had seen the Boat Race, I did as a good many
other fellows from the 'Varsity do--I went West. By sheer accident I met
a girl so like myself that--well, I didn't know then that I had a
sister. Yesterday I learnt, then, that I have one--not my father's
daughter, only my mother's--and you know what that means. We had supper
together at the Trocadero----"

"Really, Vane, I do think you might spare me these little details," said
Enid, with a sort of weary impatience. "I have