me, Amabel," Lady Elliston suddenly pleaded, "this is not going to
blacken things for you; you won't let it blacken things. You will live;
you will leave your prison and come out into the world, with your
splendid boy, and live."

Amabel slightly shook her head.

"Oh, why do you say that? Has it hurt so horribly?"

Amabel seemed to make the effort to think what it had done. She did not
know. The ghost wailed; but she could not see its form.

"Did you care--so tremendously--about him?"--Lady Elliston asked, and
her voice trembled. And, for answer, the drowned eyes looked up at her
through strange, cold tears.

"Oh, my dear, my dear," Lady Elliston murmured. Her hand was still in
Amabel's and she stood there beside her, her hand so held, for a long,
silent moment. They had looked away from each other.

And in the silence each knew that it was the end and that they would see
each other no more. They lived in different planets, under different
laws; they could understand, they could trust; but a deep, transparent
chasm, like that of the ether flowing between two divided worlds, made
them immeasurably apart.

Yet, when she at last gently released Amabel's hand, drawing her own
away. Lady Elliston said: "But,--won't you come out now?"

"Out? Where?" Amabel asked, in the voice of that far distance.

"Into the world, the great, splendid world."

"Splendid?"

"Splendid, if you choose to seize it and take what it has to give."

After a moment Amabel asked: "Has it given you so much?"

Lady Elliston looked at her from across the chasm; it was not dark, it
held no precipices; it was made up only of distance. Lady Elliston saw;
but she was loyal to her own world. "Yes, it has," she said. "I've
lived; you have dreamed your life away. You haven't even a reality to
mourn the loss of."

"No," Amabel said; she closed her eyes and turned her head away against
the chair; "No; I have lived too. Don't pity me."

X

It was past five when Augustine came into the empty drawing-room. Tea
was standing waiting, and had been there, he saw, for some time. He rang
and asked the maid to tell Lady Channice. Lady Channice, he heard, was
lying down and wanted no tea. Lady Elliston had gone half an hour
before. After a moment or two of deliberation, Augustine sat down and
made tea for himself. That was soon over. He ate nothing, looking with a
vague gaze of repudiation at the plate of bread and butter and the
cooling scones.