th the joy of
which my beloved's kindness seemed a sufficient warranty. Poor egotist!
Am I to tell you what I found when I came up those steep stairs to the
chamber where I had left him on his knees to her? Or can you guess?

He was on his knees no more, but he held her in his arms, and as I
entered he was kissing the tears from her wet, flushed cheek. Her
eyelids drooped; she was pale as the dead without, so pale that her
eyebrows looked abnormally and dreadfully dark. She did not cling to
him. Neither did she resist his caresses, but lay passive in his arms as
though her proper paradise was there. And neither heard me enter; it was
as though they had forgotten all the world but one another.

"So this is it," said I very calmly. I can hear my voice as I write.

They fell apart on the instant. Rattray glared at me, yet I saw that his
eyes were dim. Eva clasped her hands before her, and looked me steadily
in the face. But never a word.

"You love him?" I said sternly.

The silence of consent remained unbroken.

"Villain as he is?" I burst out.

And at last Eva spoke.

"I loved him before he was one," said she. "We were engaged."

She looked at him standing by, his head bowed, his arms folded; next
moment she was very close to me, and fresh tears were in her eyes. But I
stepped backward, for I had had enough.

"Can you not forgive me?"

"Oh, dear, yes."

"Can't you understand?"

"Perfectly," said I.

"You know you said--"

"I have said so many things!"

"But this was that you--you loved me well enough to--give me up."

And the silly ego in me--the endless and incorrigible I--imagined her
pouting for a withdrawal of those brave words.

"I not only said it," I declared, "but I meant every word of it."

None the less had I to turn from her to hide my anguish. I leaned my
elbows on the narrow stone chimney-piece, which, with the grate below
and a small mirror above, formed an almost solitary oasis in the four
walls of books. In the mirror I saw my face; it was wizened, drawn, old
before its time, and merely ugly in its sore distress, merely repulsive
in its bloody bandages. And in the mirror also I saw Rattray, handsome,
romantic, audacious, all that I was not, nor ever would be, and I
"understood" more than ever, and loathed my rival in my heart.

I wheeled round on Eva. I was not going to give her up--to him. I would
tell her so before him--tell him so to his face. But she had turned
away; she was