e, except the one thing----"

"I adore you, Robert. Oh, I can't get at what I want to say! Any talk
about love always sounds very stilted or hollow. I only know that I want
to live intensely in all that concerns you; that just to think of you
makes me perfectly happy. When I said that learning _Phedre_ and
_Juliet_ was the reason I lived, I was thinking of the time when I had
no right to think of you. Of course I loved you always, from the
beginning. It began at Chambord when I first met you. I very seldom say
these things, and it is better that they should remain unsaid for the
most part. But you must never doubt me, and I feel to-day, in spite of
all we know about each other and all we have suffered, that you are
doubting me now. You fear I don't know my own mind. Isn't this the
trouble?"

The intuition which comes to men and women through suffering has always
the certain sharpness of a surgeon's knife. It may be a reassurance to
have the inmost thought plucked at by some loving spirit, and yet it is
seldom that the touch can be given without inflicting agony. Orange
could not reply at once. In his resolve to be unselfish--to put aside
that personal equation which was nothing less than his whole nature--he
had to steel his heart to her, contradicting painfully, by curt, unfelt
phrases, the promptings of a soul turned in upon itself, desolate and
confused.

"I have been selfish and thoughtless," he said abruptly; "a missed
vocation is irreplaceable and it is also indestructible. You hear the
echo of the call as long as you live--perhaps afterwards. At your age
you could feel, but you could not wholly understand your talents. If you
had told me all this before----"

She laughed with real joyousness and clung more closely to his arm.

"I didn't tell you," she exclaimed, "because you would have said just
what you are saying now. You are the one. All the rest is a means of
forgetting you. It is something resembling happiness to be alone in the
turmoil of the world with one unspoilt illusion. This illusion in my
case is a little idea that I could be a great actress--perhaps! Don't
look grave, Robert. It makes you sad when I talk this way."

"Those who can be disillusioned have no convictions. Disillusion is the
failure of a half-belief. I learnt that long ago. But I hate the very
word in your mouth. Woe to us both if we cannot be resolute now. I
could have waited--had I seen any reason to wait. Time could make no
dif