still smiled at her. He shook his head.

"You are very willful," he remarked.

"That's right. Abuse me. I like it, playmate."

But he could abuse her no more. Fancy in him was dead or dumb. He was
tired of thinking, tired of his own life, with its special problems. A
deep gravity came over her own face also. When she spoke, it was with a
high dignity and seriousness.

"Osmond," she said, "I sent for you because I want to give you something
before I go away. I can't bear to go. I can't bear to leave this place
and grannie--and you. Sometimes I think I shall die of homesickness over
there, even in the few weeks I stay, to think what may happen to you
before I see you again. So I want to give it to you."

She was under some stress he did not understand, yet speaking with a
determined quiet.

"What is it?" he asked gently.

She had no words left, only the two she had thought of for days and days
until it had seemed to her he must hear her heart beating them out. She
held her hands together in her lap, and spoke clearly, though it
frightened her:--

"My love, Osmond, my love."

He had turned his look away from her, and feeling the aloofness of that,
she fell to trembling. When he began to speak, she stopped him. It
seemed to her that he was bringing rejection of her gift, and she could
not bear it.

"No," she said, "don't say it."

But he did speak, in that grave, moved tone:--

"That is dear of you. I shall always keep your present, just as grannie
will keep your love for her. It's very precious."

Hope and will went out of her. She put her clasped hands on the chair in
front of her, and bent her head upon them, trembling.

"What is it?" she said at last, "what is it that has come between us? Is
it what you told me once in the playhouse? that you were going to give
your life away when you chose?"

He laughed a little, sadly, to himself.

"How long ago that seems!" he mused. "No, it was a different thing I
meant then."

"What was it? Tell me, Osmond."

"I can tell you now, for I shall never do it. It smells of madness to
me, now I see what living demands of us. It was only,--well, my body
hadn't done me much service in the ways I should have liked."

"Tell me, Osmond!"

"I meant to give it, living, to some scientist, to experiment on. To a
doctor, if I could find one that would meet me as I wanted to be met, to
work on,--with drugs, with germs,--the things they do to dogs, you
know."

She forgot