up at him with frank
pain. "Why do you want to make it so hard for us both?"

"Then ... it is hard ... a little ... for you, too? I mean ... it hurts
you to hurt me so?"

"Yes, yes, it hurts me! Do you think I am made of stone? Do you think I
like seeing you suffer?"

"Then...." his throat closed on the words he wanted to say. He was
ignominiously near to tears. Chokily he got it out:

"Then ... don't send me away ... just because ... I love you. Let me
stay near you.... It can't hurt you ... and it's life to me."

"No, no. That would be horribly wrong of me--utterly, hatefully
selfish."

He caught at this.

"You'd like to have me? You've called me a good 'playmate,' you know. I
won't bore you with--with"--he gulped--"this craziness of mine.... If
I'm 'good' ... you'll let me stay on?"

"Oh, it's all wrong! It's all wrong, my dear!" said Sophy, quite
desperately. "You should go away at once. This is all just a phase ...
just a passing...."

"Please," said Loring, with real dignity.

Sophy felt very unhappy. She knew that she was doing wrong to temporise.
Yet that cruel kindness of the tender-hearted made her hesitate. She
could not bear to banish him all at once in this harsh way.

"Well ... for a little while...." she murmured weakly. "But it would be
much better for you to...."

"Please," said Loring again. "Allow me to judge of what will be best for
me."

"I ought not to," she said miserably. The whole scene had unnerved
her--jarred the fine, secure monotony of the life that she had thought
so firmly established. One cannot stand face to face with genuine love
without feeling a stir in chords long dumb. Loring's young, idealising
passion had set certain strings in Sophy's nature vibrating. It gave her
that sensation of aching melancholy with which we listen to the faint
notes of an old piano that was rich and mellow in our youth. It made her
feel very lonely. She had not once felt lonely since coming home--not
once in these calmly joyous years of mental renewal. Restlessness she
had known of late, but never loneliness. Now she felt all drooping with
the solitude of her own spirit as she walked homeward beside Loring. The
soft, dun red of the autumn sky seemed to her like the quiet, sombre
glow of her own life that had no more flame to give forth, that had sunk
into steady embers, that would presently resolve itself into the white
ash of old age. Yet it was wonderful to be loved again--even though sh