"I meant it, Saralie," he said. "Sometimes men are infatuated, and
write what they do not mean. They are sincere at the time, and then
later on--But I meant it. I shall always mean it."

Not then, nor during the three days in London, did he so much as take
her hand. He was not well. He ate nothing, and at night he lay awake
and drank a great deal of water. Once or twice he found her looking at
him anxiously, but he disclaimed all illness.

He had known from the beginning what he was doing. But he did not touch
her, because in his heart he knew that where once he had been worthy he
was no longer worthy. He had left his work for a woman.

It is true that he had expected to go back at once. But the
_Philadelphia_, which had been listed to sail the next day, was held up
by a strike in Liverpool, and he waited on, taking such hours as she
could give him, feverishly anxious to make her happy, buying her little
gifts, mostly flowers, which she wore tucked in her belt and smiled
over, because she had never before received flowers from a man.

He was alternately gay and silent. They walked across the Thames by the
Parliament buildings, and midway across he stopped and looked long at the
stream. And they went to the Zooelogical Gardens, where he gravely named
one of the sea lions for Colonel Lilias because of its mustache, and
insisted on saluting it each time before he flung it a fish. Once he
soberly gathered up a very new baby camel, all legs, in his arms, and
presented it to her.

"Please accept it, mademoiselle," he said. "With my compliments."

They dined together every night, very modestly, sitting in some crowded
restaurant perhaps, but seeing little but each other. Sara Lee had
bought a new hat in London--black, of course, but faced with white.
He adored her in it. He would sit for long moments, his elbows propped
on the table, his blond hair gleaming in the candlelight, and watch her.

"I wonder," he said once, "if you had never met him would you have loved
me?"

"I do love you, Henri."

"I don't want that sort of love." And he had turned his head away.

But one evening he called for her at Morley's, a white and crushed boy,
needing all that she could give him and much more. He came as a man
goes to the woman he loves when he is in trouble, much as a child to his
mother. Sara Lee, coming down to the reception room, found him alone
there, walking rapidly up and down. He turned desperate eyes on her.

"I have