ast part of
what you say ... what you imagine ... will you do for me, now, just one
thing in return?"

He sat motionless, as if fearing to frighten away the shy touch on his
hand, and she left it there, conscious of her gesture only as part of
the high ritual of their farewell.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked in a low tone.

"_Not_ to tell me!" she breathed on a deep note of entreaty.

"_Not_ to tell you--?"

"Anything--_anything_--just to leave our ... our friendship ... as it
has been--as--as a painter, if a friend asked him, might leave a
picture--not quite finished, perhaps ... but all the more exquisite...."

She felt the hand under hers slip away, recover itself, and seek her
own, which had flashed out of reach in the same instant--felt the start
that swept him round on her as if he had been caught and turned about
by the shoulders.

"You--_you_--?" he stammered, in a strange voice full of fear and
tenderness; but she held fast, so centred in her inexorable resolve
that she was hardly conscious of the effect her words might be
producing.

"Don't you see," she hurried on, "don't you _feel_ how much safer it
is--yes, I'm willing to put it so!--how much safer to leave everything
undisturbed ... just as ... as it has grown of itself ... without
trying to say: 'It's this or that'...? It's what we each choose to call
it to ourselves, after all, isn't it? Don't let us try to find a name
that ... that we should both agree upon ... we probably shouldn't
succeed." She laughed abruptly. "And ghosts vanish when one names
them!" she ended with a break in her voice.

When she ceased her heart was beating so violently that there was a
rush in her ears like the noise of the river after rain, and she did
not immediately make out what he was answering. But as she recovered
her lucidity she said to herself that, whatever he was saying, she must
not hear it; and she began to speak again, half playfully, half
appealingly, with an eloquence of entreaty, an ingenuity in argument,
of which she had never dreamed herself capable. And then, suddenly,
strangling hands seemed to reach up from her heart to her throat, and
she had to stop.

Her companion remained motionless. He had not tried to regain her hand,
and his eyes were away from her, on the river. But his nearness had
become something formidable and exquisite--something she had never
before imagined. A flush of guilt swept over her--vague reminiscences
of French n