what
he was going to do. He did not justify it, and perhaps could not. Yet to
him what he purposed was so clearly the best thing that Cecily must be
forced into it. She could not be forced by force; if he told her the
truth, he would meet at the outset a resistance which he could not
quell. He might encounter that after all, later on, in spite of a
present success. That was the great risk he was determined to run. At
the worst there would be something gained; if she were and would be
nothing else, she should and must at least be mistress of Blent. His
imagination had set her in that place; his pride, no less than his love,
demanded it for her. He had gone away once that she might have it. If
need be, again he would go away. That stood for decision later.

She walked slowly to the end of the Long Gallery and sat down in the
great arm-chair; it held its old position in spite of the changes which
Harry noted with quick eyes and a suppressed smile as he followed her
and set his candle on a table near. He lit two more from it and then
turned to her. She was pale and defiant.

"Well," she said, "why are you here?"

She asked and he gave no excuse for the untimely hour of his visit and
no explanation of it. It seemed a small, perhaps indeed a natural, thing
to both of them.

"I'm here because I couldn't keep away," he answered gravely, standing
before her.

"You promised to keep away. Can't you keep promises?"

"No, not such promises as that."

"And so you make my life impossible! You see this room, you see how I've
changed it? I've been changing everything I could. Why? To forget you,
to blot you out, to be rid of you. I've been bringing myself to take my
place. To-night I seemed at last to be winning my way to it. Now you
come. You gave me all this; why do you make it impossible to me?" A
bright color came on her cheeks now as she grew vehement in her
reproaches, and her voice was intense, though low.

A luxury of joy swept over him as he listened. Every taunt witnessed to
his power, every reproach to her love. He played a trick indeed and a
part, but there was no trick and no acting in so far as he was her
lover. If that truth could not redeem his deception, it stifled all
sense of guilt.

"And you were forgetting? You were getting rid of me?" he asked, smiling
and fixing his eyes on her.

"Perhaps. And now----!" She made a gesture of despair. "Tell me--why
have you come?" Her tone changed to entreaty.

"I've