back again?" she added, breathlessly almost. The
news was so sudden that it made her breathless. This was the last
time--the very last!

They might never see each other again in this world, and if they did
ever chance to meet, Priscilla Gower would be his wife. And yet he was
standing there now, only a few feet from her, so near that her
outstretched hand would touch him. The full depth of misery in the
thought flashed upon her all at once, and drove the blood back to her
heart.

"Why?" she gasped out unconsciously, through the very strength of her
pangs. "You are going away forever."

She scarcely knew that she had uttered the words until she saw how
deathly pale he grew. The beads of moisture started out upon his
forehead, and his nervous hand went up to brush them away.

"Not forever, I trust," he said, huskily. "Only until--until--"

"Until July," she ended for him; "until you are married to Miss
Priscilla Gower."

She held up one little, trembling, dusky hand, and actually began to
tell the intervening months off her fingers. She was trying so hard to
calm herself that she did not think what she was doing. She only knew
she must do or say something.

"How many months will it be?" she said. "It is February now; March,
April, May, June, July. Five months--not quite five, perhaps. We may not
be here then. Lady Throckmorton intends to visit the Spas during the
summer."

From the depths of her heart she was praying that some chance might take
them away from Paris before he returned. It would be his bridal
tour--Priscilla's bridal tour. Ah, if some wildly happy dream had only
chanced to make it her bridal tour, and she could have gone with him as
Priscilla would, from place to place; near him all the time, loving and
trusting him always, depending on him, obedient to his lightest wishes.
Miss Priscilla was far too self-restrained to ever be as foolishly,
thrillingly tender and fond, and happy as she, Theodora North, would
have been. She could have given a little sob of despair and pain as she
thought of it.

As it was, the hopeless, foolish tears rose up to her large eyes, and
made them liquid and soft; and when they rose, Denis Oglethorpe saw
them. Such beautiful eyes as they were; such ignorant, believing,
fawn-like eyes. The eyes alone would have unmanned him--under the tears
he broke down utterly, and so was left without a shadow of control.

He crossed the hearth with a stride and stood close to her, hi