dge your conduct."

She had an unerring instinct for what would wound him. If she had
answered with conviction, "Yes, I am indifferent to you," there would
have been enough temper and exaggeration in it for him to discount the
whole statement. But to say, "No, I still love you, Vincent," in a tone
that conceded the very utmost that she could,--namely, that she still
loved him for the old, rather pitiful association,--that would be to
inflict the most painful wound possible. And so that was what she said.
She was prepared to have him take it up and cry: "You still love me? Do
you mean as you love your Aunt Alberta?" and she, still trying to be
just, would answer: "Oh, more than Aunt Alberta. Only, of course--"

The trouble was he did not make the right answer. When she said, "No, I
still love you, Vincent," he answered:

"I cannot say the same."

It was one of those replies that change the face of the world. It drove
every other idea out of her head. She stared at him for an instant.

"Nobody," she answered, "need tell me such a thing as that twice." It
was a fine phrase to cover a retreat; she left him and went to her own
room. It no more occurred to her to ask whether he meant what he said
than if she had been struck in the head she would have inquired if the
blow was real.

She did not come down to lunch. Vincent and Mathilde ate alone. Mathilde,
as she told Pete, had begun to understand her stepfather, but she had not
progressed so far as to see in his silence anything but an
unapproachable sternness. It never crossed her mind that this middle-aged
man, who seemed to control his life so completely, was suffering far more
than she, and she was suffering a good deal.

Pete had promised to come that morning, and she hadn't seen him yet. She
supposed he had come, and that, though she had been on the lookout for
him, she had missed him. She felt as if they were never going to see each
other again. When she found she was to be alone at luncheon with Farron,
she thought of appealing to him, but was restrained by two
considerations. She was a kind person, and her mother had repeatedly
impressed upon her how badly at present Mr. Farron supported any anxiety.
More important than this, however, was her belief that he would never
work at cross-purposes with his wife. What were she and Pete to do? she
thought. Mrs. Wayne would not take her in, her mother would not let Pete
come to the house, and they had no money.

Both