he
world to talk lightly about starvation.

"What should I say that for?" asks Roger, rather haughtily.

"How can I tell? I only know you are longing to say it," returns she,
wilfully.

"You are too silly to argue with," protests he, turning away with a
shrug.

Running down the steps of the balcony, Dulce, with her wrath still
burning hotly within her, goes along the garden path and so past the
small bridge, and the river, and the mighty beeches that are swaying to
and fro.

Turning a corner she comes suddenly upon Gower, who is still smoking
cigarettes, and no doubt day-dreaming about her.

"You have escaped from everybody," he says to her, in some surprise,
Dulce being a person very little given to solitude or her own society
undiluted.

"It appears I have not," returns she, bitterly.

"Well, I shan't trouble you long; I can take myself off in no time," he
says, good-humoredly, drawing to one side to let her pass.

"No--no; you can stay with me if you care to," she says, wearily,
ashamed of her petulance.

"_Care!_" he says, reproachfully; and then, coming nearer to her, "you
are unhappy! Something has happened!" he says, quickly, "what is it?"

"Nothing unhappy," says Dulce, in a dear, soft voice; "certainly not
that. Something very different; something, indeed, I have been longing
and hoping for, for weeks, for months, nay, all my life, I think."

"And--" says Stephen.

"I have broken off my engagement with Roger."

A great, happy gleam awakes within his dark eyes. Instinctively he takes
a step nearer to her, then checks himself, and draws his breath quickly.

"Are you sure?" he says, in a carefully calm tone, "are you _sure_ you
have done wisely?--I mean, will this be for your own _good_?"

"Yes, yes, of course," with fretful impatience. "It was my own doing, I
wished it."

"How did it all come about?" asks he, gently.

"I don't know. He has an abominable temper, as you know; and I--well, I
have an abominable temper, too," she says, with a very wintry little
smile, that seems made up of angry, but remorseful tears. "And--"

"If you are going to say hard things of yourself I shall not listen,"
interrupts Gower, tenderly; "you and Roger have quarreled, but perhaps,
when time makes you see things in a new light, you will forgive, and--"

"No, never! I am sure of that. This quarrel is for--'_now and
forever!_'"

She repeats these last four words mechanically--words that bear but the
commones