e glowing
forest sustained him, gave him his natural setting. He stood there
facing her, the young wood-god in his own domain. She felt a droll
almost hysteric yearning for trailing skirts, and the dignified refuge
of an armchair. That absurdly girlish bow of black ribbon seemed to burn
her neck. She knew that she looked incongruously young for the soul that
inhabited her. She made a desperate grasp at dignity of voice. Her cold
tone should be her trailing garment--make him realise the distance that
was spiritually between them. When she spoke it was in a steady voice.

"My life--as regards love--is over, because I have come to a place in it
where I do not even wish love," she said icily. A banal quotation
slipped from her before she could stop it. "'_Ich habe geliebt und
geleben_,'" she said, vexed at the crass ordinariness of the words as
they struck her ear.

There was silence. A squirrel dropped a nut through the still, flaky
gold of lapping leaves--then chittered angrily at its own awkwardness.

Loring said at last in a strangled voice:

"I am jealous of that dead man."

Sophy whitened.

"Don't say such things to me," burst from her in a sharp whisper.

"Have I hurt you?" he whispered back. "I'd die for you ... have I hurt
you? Did you love him so much as that? Are you really dead ... with
him?"

"Yes."

Another silence. Then the wilful, passionate young voice broke out
again:

"No! you are not dead ... you are not dead! You are only sleeping...."

Sophy started as though from a sort of sleep.

"We must go," she said. "I'd forgotten...."

She turned and began walking rapidly away from him.

He caught her up in a stride.

"You break my life like a rotten twig," he said. "And go to roast
chestnuts for your son."

The anguish of bitterness in his voice kept his words from absurdity.

"Don't say such things ... don't say such things," Sophy murmured,
walking faster and faster. He kept beside her, implacable in the
smarting novelty of defeated love and will.

"Your face is so beautiful and gentle.... Who would have thought you
could be so hard ... like flint?"

"I am not hard.... I only tell you the bare truth to save you pain."

"You can't save me pain. Why do you throw me these mouldy crusts of old
sayings? I offer you the best of me.... Don't you even think me worth a
word out of your heart?"

Sophy paused. Her heart gushed pity--and regret.

"Oh, my dear...." she said lamentably, looking