e
secluded garden at the rear of the hotel, where in a few moments the man
joined her at a spot where they could not be overlooked.

She turned towards him, separate, remote, incongruous, her dark eyes
showing an angry flash in them.

"Why have you come here?" she demanded with indignation. The whole aspect
of her face was tragic.

"To see you again," was his brief reply. "Before we parted at Biarritz
you lied to me," he added in a hard tone.

She held her breath, staring straight into his eyes.

"I--I don't understand you!" she stammered. "You are here to torment--to
persecute me!"

"I asked you a question, Enid, but in response you told me a deliberate
lie. Think--recall that circumstance, and tell me the truth," he said
very quietly.

She was silent for a moment. Then, with her mouth drawn to hardness, she
replied: "Yes, it is true--I lied to you, just as you have lied to me.
Remember what you told me that moonlit night when we walked by the sea
towards the Grotto of Love. I was a fool to have believed in you--to have
trusted you as I did! You left me, and, though I wrote time after time
to your club, you refused to send me a single line."

"Because--because, Enid, I dared not," replied her companion.

"Why not?" she demanded quickly. "You told me that you loved me, yet--yet
your own actions have shown that you lied to me!"

"No," he protested in a low, earnest, hoarse voice; "I told you the
truth, Enid, but----"

"But what?" she interrupted in quickly earnestness.

"Well," he replied after a brief pause, "the fact is that I am compelled
to wear a mask, even to you, the woman I love. I cannot tell you the
truth--I cannot, dearest, for your own sake."

"And you expect me to believe this lame story--eh?" she laughed. She was
pale and fragile, yet she seemed to expand and to dilate with force and
energy.

"Enid," he answered in a low voice, with honesty in his eyes, "I would
rather sacrifice my great love for you than betray the trust I hold most
sacred. So great is my love for you, rather would I never look upon your
dear face again than reveal to you the tragic truth and bring upon you
unhappiness and despair."

"Walter," she replied in a trembling voice, looking straight into his
countenance with those wonderful dark eyes wherein her soul brimmed over
with weary emotion and fatigued passion, "I repeat all that I told you on
that calm night beside the sea. I love you; I think of you day by day,
hou