n her voice, which she did not attempt to suppress.
Maurice made no answer, but in his face was such a mixture of surprise
and disconcertion that it was answer enough.

She remained standing, with her head bowed; and Maurice, who, in his
nervousness, had gripped the back of his chair, held it so tightly that
it left a furrow in his hand. He was looking into the lamp, and did not
at first see that Louise had raised her head again and was
contemplating him. When she had succeeded in making him look at her,
she sat down on the sofa and drew the folds of her dressing-gown to her.

"Come and sit here. I want to speak to you."

But Maurice only shot a quick glance at her, and did not move.

She leaned forward, in her old position. She had pushed the heavy wings
of hair up from her forehead, and this, together with her extreme
pallor, gave her face a look of febrile intensity.

"Maurice Guest," she said slowly, "do you remember a night last summer,
when, by chance, you happened to walk with me, coming home from the
theatre?--Or have you perhaps forgotten?"

He shook his head.

"Then do you remember, too, what you said to me? How, since the first
time you had seen me--you even knew where that was, I believe--you had
thought about me ... thought too much, or words to that effect. Do you
remember?"

"Do you think when a man says a thing like that he forgets it?" asked
Maurice in a gruff voice. He turned, as he spoke, and looked down on
her with a kind of pitying wisdom. "If you knew how often I have
reproached myself for it!" he added.

"There was no need for that," she answered, and even smiled a little.
"We women never resent having such things said to us--never--though it
is supposed we do, and though we must pretend to. But I remember, too,
I was in a bad mood that night, and was angry with you, after all.
Everything seemed to have gone against me. In the theatre--in ... Oh,
no, no!" she cried, as she remembrance of that past night, with its
alternations of pain and pleasure, broke over her. "My God!"

Maurice hardly breathed, for fear he should remind her of his presence.
When the paroxysm had passed, she crossed to the window; the blinds had
not been drawn, and leaning her forehead on the glass, she looked out
into the darkness. In spite of his trouble of mind, the young man could
not but comment on the ironic fashion in which fate was treating him:
not once, in all the hours he had spent on the pavement below, h