influence was over him to
liberate him. But she said nothing.

"And what have I to tell my mother?" she asked.

"I told my mother," he answered, "that I was breaking off--clean and
altogether."

"I shall not tell them at home," she said.

Frowning, "You please yourself," he said.

He knew he had landed her in a nasty hole, and was leaving her in the
lurch. It angered him.

"Tell them you wouldn't and won't marry me, and have broken off," he
said. "It's true enough."

She bit her finger moodily. She thought over their whole affair. She had
known it would come to this; she had seen it all along. It chimed with
her bitter expectation.

"Always--it has always been so!" she cried. "It has been one long battle
between us--you fighting away from me."

It came from her unawares, like a flash of lightning. The man's heart
stood still. Was this how she saw it?

"But we've had SOME perfect hours, SOME perfect times, when we were
together!" he pleaded.

"Never!" she cried; "never! It has always been you fighting me off."

"Not always--not at first!" he pleaded.

"Always, from the very beginning--always the same!"

She had finished, but she had done enough. He sat aghast. He had wanted
to say: "It has been good, but it is at an end." And she--she whose love
he had believed in when he had despised himself--denied that their love
had ever been love. "He had always fought away from her?" Then it had
been monstrous. There had never been anything really between them; all
the time he had been imagining something where there was nothing. And
she had known. She had known so much, and had told him so little. She
had known all the time. All the time this was at the bottom of her!

He sat silent in bitterness. At last the whole affair appeared in a
cynical aspect to him. She had really played with him, not he with her.
She had hidden all her condemnation from him, had flattered him, and
despised him. She despised him now. He grew intellectual and cruel.

"You ought to marry a man who worships you," he said; "then you could do
as you liked with him. Plenty of men will worship you, if you get on the
private side of their natures. You ought to marry one such. They would
never fight you off."

"Thank you!" she said. "But don't advise me to marry someone else any
more. You've done it before."

"Very well," he said; "I will say no more."

He sat still, feeling as if he had had a blow, instead of giving one.
Their eight year