o slip from his arm.

"You refuse?" she exclaimed; and he answered with a bow: "Only
because of the return you propose to make me."

She stood staring at him, in a perplexity so genuine and profound
that he could almost have smiled at it through his disgust.

"Ah, you are all incredible," she murmured at last, stooping to
repossess herself of her fan; and as she moved past him to rejoin
the group in the farther room, she added in an incisive undertone:
"You are quite at liberty to repeat our conversation to your
friend!"

VII

Durham did not take advantage of the permission thus strangely flung
at him: of his talk with her sister-in-law he gave to Madame de
Malrive only that part which concerned her.

Presenting himself for this purpose, the day after Mrs. Boykin's
dinner, he found his friend alone with her son; and the sight of the
child had the effect of dispelling whatever illusive hopes had
attended him to the threshold. Even after the governess's descent
upon the scene had left Madame de Malrive and her visitor alone, the
little boy's presence seemed to hover admonishingly between them,
reducing to a bare statement of fact Durham's confession of the
total failure of his errand.

Madame de Malrive heard the confession calmly; she had been too
prepared for it not to have prepared a countenance to receive it.
Her first comment was: "I have never known them to declare
themselves so plainly--" and Durham's baffled hopes fastened
themselves eagerly on the words. Had she not always warned him that
there was nothing so misleading as their plainness? And might it not
be that, in spite of his advisedness, he had suffered too easy a
rebuff? But second thoughts reminded him that the refusal had not
been as unconditional as his necessary reservations made it seem in
the repetition; and that, furthermore, it was his own act, and not
that of his opponents, which had determined it. The impossibility of
revealing this to Madame de Malrive only made the difficulty shut in
more darkly around him, and in the completeness of his discouragement
he scarcely needed her reminder of his promise to regard the subject
as closed when once the other side had defined its position.

He was secretly confirmed in this acceptance of his fate by the
knowledge that it was really he who had defined the position. Even
now that he was alone with Madame de Malrive, and subtly aware of
the struggle under her composure, he felt no temptat