nteresting decline. I have just played my _concerto_ very fairly. I
shall not disgrace myself at the concert to-morrow night. You may be at
peace--I have learnt several things to-day that have been salutary--very
salutary.'

She paused. He walked beside her while she pelted him,--unresisting,
helplessly silent.

'Don't come any farther,' she said resolutely after a minute, turning to
face him. 'Let us be quits! I was a temptingly easy prey. I bear no
malice. And do not let me break your friendship with Robert; that began
before this foolish business--it should outlast it. Very likely _we_
shall be friends again, like ordinary people, some day. I do not imagine
your wound is very deep, and----'

But no! Her lips closed; not even for pride's sake, and retort's sake,
will she desecrate the past, belittle her own first love.

She held out her hand. It was very dark. He could see nothing among her
furs but the gleaming whiteness of her face. The whole personality
seemed centred in the voice--the half-mocking vibrating voice. He took
her hand and dropped it instantly.

'You do not understand,' he said hopelessly--feeling as though every
phrase he uttered, or could utter, were equally fatuous, equally
shameful. 'Thank heaven, you never will understand.'

'I think I do,' she said with a change of tone, and paused. He raised
his eyes involuntarily, met hers, and stood bewildered. What _was_ the
expression in them? It was yearning--but not the yearning of passion.
'If things had been different--if one could change the self--if the past
were nobler!'--was that the cry of them? A painful humility--a boundless
pity--the rise of some moral wave within her he could neither measure
nor explain--these were some of the impressions which passed from her to
him. A fresh gulf opened between them, and he saw her transformed on the
farther side, with, as it were, a loftier gesture, a nobler stature,
than had ever yet been hers.

He bent forward quickly, caught her hands, held them for an instant to
his lips in a convulsive grasp, dropped them, and was gone.

He gained his own room again. There lay the medley of his books, his
only friends, his real passion. Why had he ever tampered with any other?

'_It was not love--not love!_' he said to himself, with an accent of
infinite relief as he sank into his chair. '_Her_ smart will heal.'

BOOK VI

NEW OPENINGS

CHAPTER XXXVII

Ten days after Langham's return to Oxford