ovely eyes sadder than any tears.

Just as she reaches the door she turns her head, and, with a passionate
eagerness that will not be repressed, looks at Fabian. Their eyes meet.
He makes a step toward her; he has forgotten everything but that he
loves her, and that she--dearest but most agonizing of certainties--loves
him, and that she is near him, searching, as it were, into his very
soul; then remembrance comes to him, and, with a smothered groan, he
turns from her, and, leaning his arms on the chimney-piece, buries his
face in them.

Portia, to check the sob that rises in her throat, tightens her clasp on
Dulce's hand and draws the girl quickly from the room. Perhaps, too, she
seeks to hide his grief from other eyes than hers. The unwonted
sharpness of her pressure, however, rouses Dulce from her sad thoughts,
and as they reach the corridor outside she stops short, and glances half
resentfully, half with a question on her face, at Portia.

The extreme pain and grief she sees in Portia's eyes awakens her to the
truth; she draws her breath a little quickly and lays her hand
impulsively upon her cousin's bare white arm.

"You suffer too--you!" she says, in a whisper full of surprise; "Oh,
Portia! is it that you love him?"

"Has it taken you so long to discover that," says Portia, reproachfully,
who has grown somewhat reckless because of the misery of the past few
hours. The self-contained, proud girl is gone; a woman sick at heart, to
whom the best good of this world is as naught, has taken her place.
There is so much genuine pain in her voice that Dulce is touched; she
forgets all, condones all; to see a fellow-creature in pain is terrible
to this hot-blooded little shrew. The anger and disdain die out of her
eyes, and coming even closer to Portia, she looks long and earnestly at
her beautiful face.

"Oh, that you could believe in him," she says, at last, the expression
of her desire coming from her in the form of a sigh.

"If I could, I should be too deeply blessed. Yet is it that I do not
believe, or that I dread the world's disbelief? That is the sting. To
know that a stain lies on the man I love, to know that others distrust
him, and will _forever_ pass him by on the other side. That is the
horror. Dulce, I am ignoble, I fear many things; the future terrifies
me; but yet, as I am so wretched, dear, _dear_ Dulce, take me back into
your heart!"

She bursts into tears. They are so strange to her and have bee