to remember.'

'You will do me no wrong if you charge me with baseness,' he replied
gloomily. 'If I believe anything, I believe that I did love you. But I
knew myself and I should never have betrayed what I felt, if for once in
my life I could have been honourable.'

The rain pattered on the leaves and the grass, and still the sky
darkened.

'This is wretchedness to both of us,' Jasper added. 'Let us part now,
Marian. Let me see you again.'

'I can't see you again. What can you say to me more than you have said
now? I should feel like a beggar coming to you. I must try and keep some
little self-respect, if I am to live at all.'

'Then let me help you to think of me with indifference. Remember me as a
man who disregarded priceless love such as yours to go and make himself
a proud position among fools and knaves--indeed that's what it comes to.
It is you who reject me, and rightly. One who is so much at the mercy
of a vulgar ambition as I am, is no fit husband for you. Soon enough you
would thoroughly despise me, and though I should know it was merited,
my perverse pride would revolt against it. Many a time I have tried to
regard life practically as I am able to do theoretically, but it always
ends in hypocrisy. It is men of my kind who succeed; the conscientious,
and those who really have a high ideal, either perish or struggle on in
neglect.'

Marian had overcome her excess of emotion.

'There is no need to disparage yourself' she said. 'What can be simpler
than the truth? You loved me, or thought you did, and now you love me
no longer. It is a thing that happens every day, either in man or woman,
and all that honour demands is the courage to confess the truth. Why
didn't you tell me as soon as you knew that I was burdensome to you?'

'Marian, will you do this?--will you let our engagement last for another
six months, but without our meeting during that time?'

'But to what purpose?'

'Then we would see each other again, and both would be able to speak
calmly, and we should both know with certainty what course we ought to
pursue.'

'That seems to me childish. It is easy for you to contemplate months of
postponement. There must be an end now; I can bear it no longer.'

The rain fell unceasingly, and with it began to mingle an autumnal mist.
Jasper delayed a moment, then asked calmly:

'Are you going to the Museum?'

'Yes.'

'Go home again for this morning, Marian. You can't work--'

'I must; and I ha