o," she said without resentment; and there was a certain quality in
her voice new to him--a curious sweetness that he had never before
perceived.

"Tell me," he said quietly, "have you really suffered?"

"Suffered? Yes."

"You really cared for me?"

"I do still."

A flicker of the old malice lighted his face.

"But you won't let me kiss you? Why?"

She looked up into his eyes. "I feel as powerless with you as I was
before. You could always have had your will. Once I would not have
blamed you. Now it would be cowardly--because--I have forgiven myself--"

"I won't disturb your vows," he said seriously.

"Then--I think you had better go."

"I am going.... I only wanted to see you again.... May I ask you
something, dear?"

"Ask it," she said.

"Then--you are going to get over this, aren't you?"

"Not as long as you live, Louis."

"Oh!... And suppose I were not living?"

"I don't know."

"You'd recover, wouldn't you?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Well, you'd never have any other temptation--"

She turned scarlet.

"That is wicked!"

"It certainly is," he said with great gravity; "and I must come to the
scarcely flattering conclusion that there is in me a source of hideous
depravity, the unseen emanations of which, like those of the classic
upas-tree, are purest poison to a woman morally constituted as you are."

She looked up as he laughed; but there was no mirth in her bewildered
eyes.

"There _is_ something in you, Louis, which is fatal to the better side
of me."

"The _other_ Virginia couldn't endure me, I know."

"My other self learned to love your better self."

"I have none--"

"I have seen it revealed in--"

"Oh, yes," he laughed, "revealed in what you used to call one of my
infernal flashes of chivalry."

"Yes," she said quietly, "in that."

He sat very still there in the afternoon sunshine, pondering; and
sometimes his gaze searched the valley depths below, lost among the
tree-tops; sometimes he studied the far horizon where the little blue
hills stood up against the sky like little blue waves at sea. His hat
was off; the cliff breeze played with his dark curly hair, lifting it at
the temples, stirring the one obstinate strand that never lay quite flat
on the crown of his head.

Twice she looked around as though to interrupt his preoccupation, but he
neither responded nor even seemed to be aware of her; and she sighed
imperceptibly and followed his errant eyes with her