me?" she asked.

"Because I thought I should find you."

"Why did you think that?"

"I'd heard Blodgett had been a good deal at Oakmont. I guessed if
Lambert came you would, too."

"It is impertinent you should interest yourself in my movements.
Why--why do you do it?"

"Because everything you do absorbs me. Why else do you suppose I took
the trouble at Betty's dance years ago to tell you who I was?"

She drew back without answering. Her movement caught his attention. The
change in her manner, the white night, made him bold.

"I've often wondered," he said, "why you didn't remember me that day in
Princeton, or that night. It hadn't been long. Don't you see it was an
acknowledgment that I wasn't the old George Morton even then?"

"Oh, no," she answered with a little laugh, "because I remembered you
perfectly well."

"Remembered me!" he cried. "And you danced with me, and said you didn't
remember, and let me take you aside, and----"

He moved swiftly nearer until his face was close to hers, until he
stared into her eyes that he could barely see.

"Why did you do that?"

She didn't answer.

"Why do you tell me now?" he urged with an increasing excitement.

Such a confession from her had the quality of a caress! He felt himself
reaching up to touch the summit.

"Why? You've got to answer me."

She arose with easy grace and stood looking down at him.

"Because," she said, "I want you to stop being ridiculous and
troublesome; and, really, the whole thing seems so unimportant now that
I am going to be married."

He cried out. He sprang to his feet. He caught her hands, and crushed
them as if he would make them a part of his own flesh so that she could
never escape to accomplish that unbearable act.

"Sylvia! Sylvia!"

She fought, gasping:

"You hurt! I tell you you hurt! Let me go you--you----Let me go----"

VIII

George stared at Sylvia as if she had been a child expressing some
unreasonable and incredible intention. "What are you talking about? How
can I let you go?"

Even in that light he became aware of the distortion of her face, of an
unexpected moisture in her eyes; and he realized quite distinctly where
he was, what had been said, just how completely her announcement for the
moment had swept his mind clean of the restraints with which he had so
painstakingly crowded it. Now he appreciated the power of his grasp, but
he watched a little longer the struggles of her graceful body; for,
a