as
if to sweep away a blighting memory. "No, it was then I knew myself,
then I took courage to face the future without him--without you----"

"But because you refuse him, why----"

"I will not become a thief. Because my own gold has been filched and
squandered I should be no less a thief were I to fill my purse with what
I can never earn--never repay."

"My love is a free gift, Carol--I don't make reservations," he mumbled,
hopelessly, for he knew her tones dictated rather than argued.

"Won't you see that it is because your gift is so lavish, so
rare--because I cannot return--I cannot take it? Offerings of real worth
cannot be so accepted without degradation. Dear Yate, good-bye. Some day
when you have recovered this you will know I am right. Perhaps, even,
you may place me, faults and all, in some special heart-niche reserved
for defunct yet exotic truths."

She affected flippancy, but her mirth hung lank, like the curls of a
drowning man.

He bent over her hand and kissed it.

Then he said thickly, in a drunkard's voice, "I'll go ... by the garden
way----" and rushed out.

She heard the conservatory door bang behind him, and lost the sound of
his footsteps in the howl of the storm.

They took him over the soaking lawn, along the orchard, out by the
wicket, into the avenue of copper-beech and acacia where last night they
had stood together. There he beat his head against the senseless bark of
the dripping trees and wept aloud. And the burst of his sobs mingled
with the roaring of the wind as it swept over him and expended its wild
tumult against the closed windows of her house.

Twin Souls (Dialogue).

_Characters._

ARDILAUN VYSE, _a popular poet; and_ CYNICUS NEERE, _an old
bachelor._

SCENE--A SMOKING-ROOM.

ARDILAUN. I can't think why we discuss it. It's as useless to expect
sentiment from you as----

CYNICUS. To import coals to Newcastle. Who hawks goods in a stocked
market?

ARDILAUN. One likes sympathy.

CYNICUS. I sympathise profoundly; but talking about a leak doesn't stop
it.

ARDILAUN. This can't be stopped. It means the wreck of two
lives--Letitia's and mine.

CYNICUS. Together?

ARDILAUN. Together! Why, the universe would be re-created! It is
severment that ruins. There is she, brilliant, beautiful, famous, tied
for life to a money-grubber on 'Change: a wretch who cuts the leaves of
her books with his thumb, and snores over them like an apoplectic pug.