t--but my pillow has been wet many and
many a night. I have cried and cried. I have got up and walked the
floor. I have drunk whisky--plain, raw whisky--because something hurt
me and I wanted to kill the pain. I have gone with other men, one
after another--you know that--but, oh! Frank, Frank, you know that I
didn't want to, that I didn't mean to! I have always despised the
thought of them afterward. It was only because I was lonely and
because you wouldn't pay any attention to me or be nice to me. Oh, how
I have longed and longed for just one loving hour with you--one night,
one day! There are women who could suffer in silence, but I can't. My
mind won't let me alone, Frank--my thoughts won't. I can't help
thinking how I used to run to you in Philadelphia, when you would meet
me on your way home, or when I used to come to you in Ninth Street or
on Eleventh. Oh, Frank, I probably did wrong to your first wife. I
see it now--how she must have suffered! But I was just a silly girl
then, and I didn't know. Don't you remember how I used to come to you
in Ninth Street and how I saw you day after day in the penitentiary in
Philadelphia? You said then you would love me always and that you would
never forget. Can't you love me any more--just a little? Is it really
true that your love is dead? Am I so old, so changed? Oh, Frank, please
don't say that--please don't--please, please please! I beg of you!"

She tried to reach him and put a hand on his arm, but he stepped aside.
To him, as he looked at her now, she was the antithesis of anything he
could brook, let alone desire artistically or physically. The charm
was gone, the spell broken. It was another type, another point of view
he required, but, above all and principally, youth, youth--the spirit,
for instance, that was in Berenice Fleming. He was sorry--in his way.
He felt sympathy, but it was like the tinkling of a far-off
sheep-bell--the moaning of a whistling buoy heard over the thrash of
night-black waves on a stormy sea.

"You don't understand how it is, Aileen," he said. "I can't help
myself. My love is dead. It is gone. I can't recall it. I can't
feel it. I wish I could, but I can't; you must understand that. Some
things are possible and some are not."

He looked at her, but with no relenting. Aileen, for her part, saw in
his eyes nothing, as she believed, save cold philosophic logic--the man
of business, the thinker, the bargainer, the plotter. At