me of mine?"

"It is not yours--it is mine, that you have taken! You put me off my
guard, and then you took it! Yours is elsewhere, and you are welcome to
it!"

"Ah," murmured Bernard, giving him a long look and turning away, "it is
well for you that I am willing still to regard you as my best friend!"

Gordon went on, more passionately, to Angela.

"He put me off my guard--I can't call it anything else. I know I gave
him a great chance--I encouraged him, urged him, tempted him. But when
once he had spoken, he should have stood to it. He should n't have had
two opinions--one for me, and one for himself! He put me off my guard.
It was because I still resisted him that I went to you again, that last
time. But I was still afraid of you, and in my heart I believed him. As
I say, I always believed him; it was his great influence upon me. He is
the cleverest, the most intelligent, the most brilliant of men. I don't
think that a grain less than I ever thought it," he continued, turning
again to Bernard. "I think it only the more, and I don't wonder that you
find a woman to believe it. But what have you done but deceive me? It
was just my belief in your intelligence that reassured me. When Miss
Vivian refused me a second time, and I left Baden, it was at first with
a sort of relief. But there came back a better feeling--a feeling faint
compared to this feeling of to-day, but strong enough to make me uneasy
and to fill me with regret. To quench my regret, I kept thinking of what
you had said, and it kept me quiet. Your word had such weight with me!"

"How many times more would you have wished to be refused, and how many
refusals would have been required to give me my liberty?" asked Bernard.

"That question means nothing, because you never knew that I had again
offered myself to Miss Vivian."

"No; you told me very little, considering all that you made me tell
you."

"I told you beforehand that I should do exactly as I chose."

"You should have allowed me the same liberty!"

"Liberty!" cried Gordon. "Had n't you liberty to range the whole world
over? Could n't he have found a thousand other women?"

"It is not for me to think so," said Angela, smiling a little.

Gordon looked at her a moment.

"Ah, you cared for him from the first!" he cried.

"I had seen him before I ever saw you," said the girl.

Bernard suppressed an exclamation. There seemed to flash through these
words a sort of retrospective confession whi