s it, Louise? Tell me--quickly. Remember, I've been all day in
suspense," he said, as seconds passed and she did not speak.

"You got my note then?"

"What is it?--what did you mean?"

"Just a little patience, Maurice. You take one's breath away. You want
to know everything at once. I sent for you because--oh, because ... I
want you to let us go on being friends."

"Is that all?" he cried, and his face fell. "When I have told you again
and again that's just what I can't do?"

She smiled. "I wish I had known you as a boy, Maurice--oh, but as quite
a young boy!" she said in such a changed voice that he glanced up in
surprise. Whether it was the look she bent on him, or her voice, or her
words, he did not know; but something emboldened him to do what he had
often done in fancy: he slid to his knees before her, and laid his head
on her lap. She began to smooth back his hair, and each time her hand
came forward, she let it rest for a moment.--She wondered how he would
look when he knew.

"You can't care for me, I know. But I would give my life to make you
happy."

"Why do you love me?" She experienced a new pleasure in postponing his
knowing, postponing it indefinitely.

"How can I say? All I know is how I love you--and how I have suffered."

"My poor Maurice," she said, in the same caressing way. "Yes, I shall
always call you poor.--For the love I could give you would be worthless
compared with yours."

"To me it would be everything.--If you only knew how I have longed for
you, and how I have struggled!"

He took enough of her dress to bury his face in. She sat back, and
looked over him into the growing dusk of the room: and, in the
alabaster of her face, nothing seemed to live except her black eyes,
with the half-rings of shadow.

Suddenly, with the unexpectedness that marked her movements when she
was very intent, she leant forward again, and, with her elbow on her
knee, her chin on her hand, said in a low voice: "Is it for ever?"

"For ever and ever."

"Say it's for ever." She still looked past him, but her lips had
parted, and her face wore the expression of a child's listening to
fairy-tales. At her own words, a vista seemed to open up before her,
and, at the other end, in blue haze, shone the great good that had
hitherto eluded her.

"I shall always love you," said the young man. "Nothing can make any
difference."

"For ever," she repeated. "They are pretty words."

Then her expression changed;