a satisfaction to finish one conversation with you.
We seem to remain all beginnings."

"What end is there to such conversations as this, Mr. Canning?"

"Conversations end in many ways, Miss Heth. I have known them to end
like journeys."

The man left the fire, advanced to her side, took the modish wrap from
her hands. But he did not at once offer to hold it for her. He stood two
feet away from her, and a gleam came into his eyes, faint and a
little cold.

"But I wonder," said he, musingly, "if what two men told you in a
summer-house one night isn't quite true, after all."

"That I have no heart, you mean?"

"And don't know the meaning of being kind. Easter lilies are pretty on a
tomb, but they were never my favorite flowers."

"No," she said, "it is not true. My heart is here"--she touched the
place--"it is large--and I am, oh, very, very kind."

"You are rather adorable, you know," said his abrupt voice. "Here is
your coat."

She was warm to the eye, animating, of an exquisite figure. Her nearness
released a faint fragrance. She slipped her left arm into the sleeve he
offered, and looking up at him, half over her shoulder, said with a
mocking little laugh:

"And _you_ know that kind-hearted girls are always awfully credulous....
I sweep you off your feet. My eyes _intoxicate_ you, drive you _mad!_ Go
on. I've told you that I like your pretty speeches."

"I do not always stop with speeches--you wild, sweet thing...."

So Mr. Canning; and with that speech he did in fact stop most abruptly,
and at once turned a step away. In the sharp brief silence, Carlisle put
on her other sleeve for herself.

From the hall, almost at the door, it seemed, had sounded the brisk
approaching voices of Mrs. Heth and Kerr; presumably also of Johnson.
Destiny, having had its way with their absence, was returning them upon
the dot. In the sitting-room, talk of such matters as Miss Heth's wild
sweetness necessarily came to a sudden conclusion.

The big man lounged with folded arms. His look was slightly annoyed.

"One more beginning, and you have your way again, after all! This
becomes a habit," said he, with his faint ironic note. "Miss Heth, I am
as you say quite dull and safe: the dullest of all creatures, a play
valetudinarian, bored to ill-manners at times, as you have observed, by
large overdoses of my own society. Could you take pity on me? Could you
and Mrs. Heth give me the pleasure of dining with me, and Kerr, at t