ng the very power that governs it, it attains its end.

Sally, yearning in her heart for one more sight of Traill, the putting
to the touch of her last hope, and then crushing out the desire into
an apparent oblivion, was trapped, deceived, outwitted by such
subtle suggestions as that she had been thwarted in her determination
of sacrifice.

At the bottom of Waterloo Place, she hesitated. He had said he would
wait half an hour. She would be back almost immediately if she
returned at once. Her steps took her onwards down Pall Mall, but they
were slower and more measured than before. At the Carlton Restaurant,
she stopped again. She wanted to give him back the bangle herself;
to tell him herself how utterly she knew it was at an end. She could
write, certainly; she could send the little box by post. She had said
she would. But a romance, the only romance she had ever had in her
life, to end through the tepid medium of the post--the letter dropped
in through the black and gaping slit--just the one moment's thrill
that now he must get it! Then, nothing; then, emptiness and the end.
She wanted more than that. She would cry, perhaps, break down when
she saw him put it aside where she could never touch it again. But
what were tears? They were better than nothing; better than the
hollowness of such an end as the writing of a letter would bring.

With half-formed decision, she turned up Haymarket instead of
crossing towards Trafalgar Square and so, slowly, by indecisive
steps, she found herself, some ten minutes later, once more knocking
gently upon Traill's door.

The sound from within, as he jumped to his feet, set her heart beating
through the blood, and though she steadied herself, her lips were
trembling as he opened and made way for her to enter.

She walked straight into the room, did not turn until she heard him
close the door; even then, she refused to let her eyes meet his in
a direct gaze. This was not easy for, having once shut the door, he
stood with his back to it, looking intently at her as if, securing
her at last, he would not willingly let her free.

"What made you come?" he asked, slowly--"and, having come--then, why
on earth did you go away? In the last few minutes before you arrived,
I almost began to think that you weren't coming back again."

She tried to hide her nervousness by taking off her gloves, but her
fingers fumbled at the buttons, and in her awkwardness the seam of
one of the fingers slit