" her voice vibrating.

"You still love him."

"That is not kind," striving hard to keep the smile on her trembling
lips. "Oh, I beg of you, do not make this friendship impossible. Do
not rob me of the one man I trust."

Cathewe motioned aside the fish and reached for his sauterne. "I have
loved you faithfully and loyally for seven years. I have tried to win
you by all those roads a man may honorably traverse in quest of the one
woman. For seven years; and for something like three I have stayed
away at your command. Will you believe it? Sometimes my hands ache
for his throat . . . Smile, they are looking."

It was a crooked smile. "Why did I ever tell you?"

"Why did you ever tell me . . . only part? It is the other part I wish
to know. Till I learn what that is I shall never leave you. You will
find that there is a difference between love and infatuation."

"As I have never known infatuation I can not tell the difference. Now,
no more, unless you care to see me break down before them. For if you
tell me that you have loved me seven years, I have loved him eight,"
cruelly, for Cathewe was pressing her cruelly.

"Devil take him! What do you find in the man?"

"What do you find in me?" her eyes filled with anger.

"Forgive me, Hildegarde; I am blind and mad to-night. I did not expect
to find him here either."

Breitmann had tried ineffectually to read their lips. She had given
her word, and once given, he knew of old that she never broke it; but
he was keenly alive that in some way he was the topic of the inaudible
conversation. As he sat here to-night he knew why he had never loved
Hildegarde, why in fact, he had never loved any woman. The one great
passion which comes in the span of life was centered in the girl beside
him, dividing her moments between him and Fitzgerald. Strange, but he
had not known it till he saw the two women together. For once his nice
calculations had ceased to run smoothly; there appeared now a knot in
the thread for which he saw no untying.

"You do not sing now?" asked Laura across the table.

"No," Hildegarde answered, "my voice is gone."

"Oh, I am so sorry."

"It does not matter. I can hum a little to myself; there is yet some
pleasure in that. But in opera, no, never again. Has not Mrs.
Coldfield told you? No? Imagine! One night in Dresden, in the middle
of the aria, my voice broke miserably and I could not go on."

"And her heart nearly broke wi