pon him
were so many that the weary mind made no attempt to analyse them. He had
a sense of disgrace, of having stabbed something gentle that had leant
upon him, mingled with a strong intermittent feeling of unutterable
relief. Perhaps his keenest regret was that, after all, it had not been
love! He had offered himself up to a girl's just contempt, but he had no
recompense in the shape of a great addition to knowledge, to experience.
Save for a few doubtful moments at the beginning, when he had all but
surprised himself in something more poignant, what he had been conscious
of had been nothing more than a suave and delicate charm of sentiment, a
subtle surrender to one exquisite aesthetic impression after another. And
these things in other relations the world had yielded him before.

'Am I sane?' he muttered to himself. 'Have I ever been sane? Probably
not. The disproportion between my motives and other men's is too great
to be normal. Well, at least I am sane enough to shut myself up. Long
after that beautiful child has forgotten she ever saw me I shall still
be doing penance in the desert.'

He threw himself down beside the open window with a groan. An hour later
he lifted a face blanched and lined, and stretched out his hand with
avidity towards a book on the table. It was an obscure and difficult
Greek text, and he spent the greater part of the night over it,
rekindling in himself with feverish haste the embers of his one lasting
passion.

Meanwhile, in a room overhead, another last scene in this most futile of
dramas was passing. Rose, when she came in, had locked the door, torn
off her dress and her ornaments, and flung herself on the edge of the
bed, her hands on her knees, her shoulders drooping, a fierce red spot
on either cheek. There for an indefinite time she went through a torture
of self-scorn. The incidents of the week passed before her one by
one--her sallies, her defiances, her impulsive friendliness, the _elan_,
the happiness of the last two days, the self-abandonment of this
evening. Oh, intolerable--intolerable!

And all to end with the intimation that she had been behaving like a
forward child--had gone too far and must be admonished--made to feel
accordingly! The poisoned arrow pierced deeper and deeper into the
girl's shrinking pride. The very foundations of self-respect seemed
overthrown.

Suddenly her eye caught a dim and ghostly reflection of her own figure,
as she sat with locked hands o