said coldly,
"but I was afraid to. I took it back with me to London. One day I read
in a paper that your wife was supposed to have burned it while she was
insane. She was insane, was she not? Ah, well, that is not my affair;
but I burned it for her that afternoon."

They were moving on again. He stopped her once more.

"Why have you told me this?" he cried. "Was it not enough for you that
I should think she did it?"

"No," Lady Pippinworth answered, "that was not enough for me. I always
wanted you to know that I had done it."

"And you wrote that letter, you filled me with joy, so that you should
gloat over my disappointment?"

"Horrid of me, was it not!" said she.

"Why did you not tell me when we met the other day?"

"I bided my time, as the tragedians say."

"You would not have told me," Tommy said, staring into her face, "if
you had thought I cared for you. Had you thought I cared for you a
little jot--"

"I should have waited," she confessed, "until you cared for me a great
deal, and then I should have told you. That, I admit, was my
intention."

She had returned his gaze smilingly, and as she strolled on she gave
him another smile over her shoulder; it became a protesting pout
almost when she saw that he was not accompanying her. Tommy stood
still for some minutes, his hands, his teeth, every bit of him that
could close, tight clenched. When he made up on her, the devil was in
him. She had been gathering a nosegay of wild flowers. "Pretty, are
they not?" she said to him. He took hold of her harshly by both
wrists. She let him do it, and stood waiting disdainfully; but she was
less unprepared for a blow than for what came.

"How you love me, Alice!" he said in a voice shaking with passion.

"How I have proved it!" she replied promptly.

"Love or hate," he went on in a torrent of words, "they are the same
thing with you. I don't care what you call it; it has made you come
back to me. You tried hard to stay away. How you fought, Alice! but
you had to come. I knew you would come. All this time you have been
longing for me to go to you. You have stamped your pretty feet because
I did not go. You have cried, 'He shall come!' You have vowed you
would not go one step of the way to meet me. I saw you, I heard you,
and I wanted you as much as you wanted me; but I was always the
stronger, and I could resist. It is I who have not gone a step towards
you, and it is my proud little Alice who has come all the w