has nothing to do on the face of it with the strength of affections;
nevertheless, she felt a sudden concern for this power running to waste
on her account, which, combined with a desire to keep possession of that
strangely attractive masculine power, made her rouse herself from her
torpor.

Why should she not simply tell him the truth--which was that she had
accepted him in a misty state of mind when nothing had its right shape
or size? that it was deplorable, but that with clearer eyesight marriage
was out of the question? She did not want to marry any one. She wanted
to go away by herself, preferably to some bleak northern moor, and
there study mathematics and the science of astronomy. Twenty words would
explain the whole situation to him. He had ceased to speak; he had told
her once more how he loved her and why. She summoned her courage, fixed
her eyes upon a lightning-splintered ash-tree, and, almost as if she
were reading a writing fixed to the trunk, began:

"I was wrong to get engaged to you. I shall never make you happy. I have
never loved you."

"Katharine!" he protested.

"No, never," she repeated obstinately. "Not rightly. Don't you see, I
didn't know what I was doing?"

"You love some one else?" he cut her short.

"Absolutely no one."

"Henry?" he demanded.

"Henry? I should have thought, William, even you--"

"There is some one," he persisted. "There has been a change in the last
few weeks. You owe it to me to be honest, Katharine."

"If I could, I would," she replied.

"Why did you tell me you would marry me, then?" he demanded.

Why, indeed? A moment of pessimism, a sudden conviction of the
undeniable prose of life, a lapse of the illusion which sustains youth
midway between heaven and earth, a desperate attempt to reconcile
herself with facts--she could only recall a moment, as of waking from a
dream, which now seemed to her a moment of surrender. But who could give
reasons such as these for doing what she had done? She shook her head
very sadly.

"But you're not a child--you're not a woman of moods," Rodney persisted.
"You couldn't have accepted me if you hadn't loved me!" he cried.

A sense of her own misbehavior, which she had succeeded in keeping from
her by sharpening her consciousness of Rodney's faults, now swept over
her and almost overwhelmed her. What were his faults in comparison with
the fact that he cared for her? What were her virtues in comparison with
the fact that sh