doing; I had never dreamed of anything but coming up to
the scratch." Owen grew more and more lucid, and more confident of the
effect of his lucidity. "She called it 'taking a stand,' to see what
mother would do. I told her mother would do what I would make her do;
and to that she replied that she would like to see me make her first. I
said I would arrange that everything should be all right, and she said
she really preferred to arrange it herself. It was a flat refusal to
trust me in the smallest degree. Why then had she pretended so
tremendously to care for me? And of course, at present," said Owen, "she
trusts me, if possible, still less."

Fleda paid this statement the homage of a minute's muteness. "As to
that, naturally, she has reason."

"Why on earth has she reason?" Then, as his companion, moving away,
simply threw up her hands, "I never looked at you--not to call
looking--till she had regularly driven me to it," he went on. "I know
what I'm about. I do assure you I'm all right!"

"You're not all right--you're all wrong!" Fleda cried in despair. "You
mustn't stay here, you mustn't!" she repeated with clear decision. "You
make me say dreadful things, and I feel as if I made _you_ say them."
But before he could reply she took it up in another tone. "Why in the
world, if everything had changed, didn't you break off?"

"I?--" The inquiry seemed to have moved him to stupefaction. "Can you
ask me that question when I only wanted to please you? Didn't you seem
to show me, in your wonderful way, that that was exactly how? I didn't
break off just on purpose to leave it to _her_. I didn't break off so
that there shouldn't be a thing to be said against me."

The instant after her challenge Fleda had faced him again in
self-reproof. "There _isn't_ a thing to be said against you, and I don't
know what nonsense you make me talk! You _have_ pleased me, and you've
been right and good, and it's the only comfort, and you must go.
Everything must come from Mona, and if it doesn't come we've said
entirely too much. You must leave me alone--forever."

"Forever?" Owen gasped.

"I mean unless everything is different."

"Everything _is_ different--when I _know_!"

Fleda winced at what he knew; she made a wild gesture which seemed to
whirl it out of the room. The mere allusion was like another embrace.
"You know nothing--and you must go and wait! You mustn't break down at
this point."

He looked about him and took up his ha