me to forgive him again. He never once thinks of me, nor of my
humiliation!" Her lips were quivering, but her voice rang clear.

"He thinks of nothing else BUT you," he pleaded. "Let your heart
work--don't throw him into the street as his father has done. He loves
you so."

"_I_--throw HIM in the street! He has thrown ME--mortified me before
everybody--behaved like a--No,--I can't--I won't discuss it!"

"May I--"

"No--not another word. I love you too much to let this come between us.
Let us talk of something else--anything--ANYTHING."

The whole chart of her heart had been unrolled. Her head and not her
heart was dominant. He felt, moreover, that no argument of his would
be of any use. Time might work out the solution, but this he could not
hasten. Nor, if the truth be told, did he blame her. It was, from
the girl's point of view, most unfortunate, of course, that the two
calamities of Harry's drunkenness and the duel had come so close
together. Perhaps--and for the first time in his life he weakened before
her tears--perhaps if he had thrown the case of pistols out of the
window, sent one man to his father and the other back to Kennedy Square,
it might all have been different--but then again, could this have been
done, and if it had been, would not all have to be done over again the
next day? At last he asked hopelessly:

"Have you no message for Harry?"

"None," she answered resolutely.

"And you will not see him?"

"No--we can never heal wounds by keeping them open." This came calmly,
and as if she had made up her mind, and in so determined a tone that he
saw it meant an end to the interview.

He rose from his seat and without another word turned toward the door.
She gained her feet slowly, as if the very movement caused her pain; put
her arms around his neck, kissed him on the cheek, followed him to the
door, waved her hand to him as she watched him pick his way across the
square, and threw herself on her lounge in an agony of tears.

That night St. George and Harry sat by the smouldering wood fire; the
early spring days were warm and joyous, but the nights were still cool.
The boy sat hunched up in his chair, his face drawn into lines from the
anxiety of the past week; his mind absorbed in the story that St. George
had brought from the Seymour house. As in all ardent temperaments, these
differences with Kate, which had started as a spark, had now developed
into a conflagration which was burning out