le sign or token had he
betrayed the slightest emotion or agitation. His voice had been steady
and unbroken; he spoke in a low and somewhat monotonous manner; it was
as though he had been relating something that in no way concerned
himself--some story that was of some other, and that other of no great
interest either to him who told it or to her who listened to the tale.
Any one suddenly coming into the room would have guessed him to be
entirely engrossed in the contemplation of the little dog between his
hands; that he was relating the story of his own heart would not have
been imagined for an instant.

When he had done speaking there was an absolute silence in the room. What
he had spoken seemed to admit of no answer of any sort or kind from his
listener. He had asked for nothing; he had pleaded neither for her
sympathy nor her forgiveness, far less for any definite expression of the
effect of his words upon her. He had not, seemingly, cared to know how
they affected her. He had simply told his own story--that was all; it
concerned no one but himself. She might pity him, she might even be
amused at him, as he had said: anyhow, it made no difference to him;
he had chosen to present a picture of his inner life to her as a
doctor might have described some complicated disease to a chance
acquaintance--it was a physiological study, if she cared to look upon it
as such; if not, it did not matter. There was no possible answer that she
could make to him; no form of words by which she could even acknowledge
that she had heard him speak.

She stood perfectly silent for the space of some two or three seconds;
she scarcely breathed, her very heart seemed to have ceased to beat; it
was as if she had been turned to stone. She knew not what she felt; it
was neither pain, nor joy, nor regret; it was only a sort of dull apathy
that oppressed her very being.

Presently she put forth her hands, almost mechanically, and reached her
cloak and hat from the chair behind her.

The soft rustle of her dress upon the carpet struck his ear; he looked up
with a start, like one waking out of a painful dream.

"You are going!" he said, in his usual voice.

"Yes; I am going."

He stood up, facing her.

"There is nothing more to be said, is there?" He said it not as though he
asked her a question, but as one asserting a fact.

"Nothing, I suppose," she answered, rather wearily, not looking at him as
she spoke.

"I shall not see you again