ou see that it was like you?"

Cornelia felt that he was taking an advantage of her, and she lifted
her eyes indignantly. "Mr. Ludlow!"

"Ah! Don't think _that_," he pleaded, and she knew that he meant her
unexpressed sense of unfairness in him. "I know you saw it; and the
likeness was there because--I wanted to tell you long ago, but I
couldn't, because when we met afterwards I was afraid that I was
mistaken, in what I thought--hoped. I had no right to know anything
till I was sure of myself; but--the picture was like you because you
were all the time in my thoughts, and nothing and no one but you.
Cornelia----" She rose up crazily, and looked toward the door, as if
she were going to run out of the room. "What is it?" he implored. "You
know I love you."

"Let me go!" she panted.

"If you tell me you don't care for me----"

"I don't! I don't care for you, and--let me go!"

He stood flushed and scared before her. "I--I am sorry. I didn't
mean--I hoped---- But it is all right---- I mean you are right, and I
am wrong. I am very wrong."

XXXI.

Ludlow stood aside and Cornelia escaped. When she reached her own room,
she had a sense of her failure to take formal leave of him, and she
mechanically blamed herself for that before she blamed herself for
anything else. At first he was altogether to blame, and she heaped the
thought of him with wild reproach and injury; if she had behaved like a
fool, it was because she was trapped into it, and could not help it;
she had to do so. She recalled distinctly, amidst the turmoil, how she
had always kept in mind that a girl who had once let a man, like that
dreadful little wretch, whose name she could not take into her
consciousness, suppose that she could care for him, could not let a man
like Ludlow care for her. If she did, she was wicked, and she knew she
had not done it for she had been on her guard against it. The reasoning
was perfect, and if he had spoiled everything now, he had himself to
thank for it; and she did not pity him. Still she wished she had not
run out of the room; she wished she had behaved with more dignity, and
not been rude; he could laugh at her for that; it was like her behavior
with him from the very beginning; there was something in him that
always made her behave badly with him, like a petulant child. He would
be glad to forget her; he would believe, now, that she was not good
enough for him; and he might laugh; but at least he could not sa