er that she was
flinging her life away--that the ship of her good fortune was sailing
from her, and it would be soon beyond the horizon; but her pride
reminded her of what they had said--that she had laid traps for him,
for his money.

"I am sorry," she said again. "But it must be only friendship."

But she had forgotten that although her back was turned he was towards
the mirror. He could see her--her white face and quivering lips.

He sprang towards her.

"Mary, try me. I will love you better than any man in God's world,
always. I will live for you, and work for you, and die for you."

It was more than she could bear. She could not reason now. She was
only resolved that she would not give way, and she pushed past him
blindly, her head hanging.

The drawing-room door closed. He stared dully in front of him. Then
he picked up his hat and left the house.

She had flung herself on her bed and lay there motionless. She heard
the door close, his steps on the stairs, and then the outer door.

She sprang to the window, and then, moved by some blind impulse, rushed
to the head of the stairs. There were steps, and Mrs. Bethel's voice
penetrated the gloom. "Mary, Mary, where are you?"

She crept back to her room.

He walked back to "The Flutes" with the one fact ever before him--that
she had refused him. He realised now that it had been his love for her
that had kept him during these weeks sane and brave. Without it, he
could not have faced his recent troubles and all the desolate sense of
outlawry and desolation that had weighed on him so terribly. Now he
must face it, alone, with the knowledge that she did not love him--that
she had told him so. It was his second rejection--the second flinging
to the ground of all his defences and walls of protection. Robin had
rejected him, Mary had rejected him, and he was absolutely, horribly
alone. He thought for a moment of Dahlia Feverel and of her desertion.
Well, she had faced it pluckily; he would do the same. Life could be
hard, but he would not be beaten. His methods of consolation, his
pulling of himself together--it was all extremely commonplace, but then
he was an essentially commonplace man, and saw things unconfusedly, one
at a time, with no entanglement of motives or complicated searching for
origins. He had accepted the fact of his rejection by his family with
the same clear-headed indifference to side-issues as he accepted now
his rejection by