it, Madelene?" he implored. "What has come between us? Does your
father object because I am--am not well enough off?"

She dropped her hands from before her face and looked at him. The first
time he saw her he had thought she was severe; ever since he had wondered
how he could have imagined severity into a countenance so gentle and
sweet. Now he knew that his first impression was not imaginary; for she
had again the expression with which she had faced the hostile world of
Saint X until he, his love, came into her life. "It is I that must ask
you what has changed you, Arthur," she said, more in sadness than in
bitterness, though in both. "I don't seem to know you this evening."

Arthur lost the last remnant of his self-consciousness. He saw he was
about to lose, if indeed he had not already lost, that which had come to
mean life to him--the happiness from this woman's beauty, the strength
from her character, the sympathy from her mind and heart. It was in
terror that he asked: "Why, Madelene? What is it? What have I done?" And
in dread he studied her firm, regular profile, a graceful strength that
was Greek, and so wonderfully completed by her hair, blue black and thick
and wavy about the temple and ear and the nape of the neck.

The girl did not answer immediately; he thought she was refusing to hear,
yet he could find no words with which to try to stem the current of those
ominous thoughts. At last she said: "You talk about the position you have
'come down from' and the position you are going back to--and that you are
grateful to your father for having brought you down where you were humble
enough to find me."

"Madelene!"

"Wait!" she commanded. "You wish to know what is the matter with me. Let
me tell you. We didn't receive you here because you are a cooper or
because you had been rich. I never thought about your position or your
prospects. A woman--at least a woman like me--doesn't love a man for his
position, doesn't love him for his prospects. I've been taking you at
just what you were--or seemed to be. And you--you haven't come, asking me
to marry you. You treat me like one of those silly women in what they
call 'society' here in Saint X. You ask me to wait until you can support
me fashionably--I who am not fashionable--and who will always support
myself. What you talked isn't what I call love, Arthur. I don't want to
hear any more about it--or, we might not be able to be even friends."

She paused; but Arth