to write. But there it is." She made her
sad and beautiful effort. "The last thing before he left us I let the
picture go."

"You mean--?" But he could only wonder--till, however, it glimmered upon
him. "You gave up your protest?"

"I gave up my protest. I told him that--so far as I'm concerned!--he
might do as he liked."

Her poor friend turned pale at the sharp little shock of it; but if his
face thus showed the pang of too great a surprise he yet wreathed the
convulsion in a gay grimace. "You leave me to struggle alone?"

"I leave you to struggle alone."

He took it in bewilderingly, but tried again, even to the heroic,
for optimism. "Ah well, you decided, I suppose, on some new personal
ground."

"Yes; a reason came up, a reason I hadn't to that extent looked for
and which of a sudden--quickly, before he went--I _had_ somehow to deal
with. So to give him my word in the dismal sense I mention was my only
way to meet the strain." She paused; Hugh waited for something further,
and "I gave him my word I wouldn't help you," she wound up.

He turned it over. "To _act_ in the matter--I see."

"To act in the matter"--she went through with it--"after the high stand
I had taken."

Still he studied it. "I see--I see. It's between you and your father."

"It's between him and me--yes. An engagement not again to trouble him."

Hugh, from his face, might have feared a still greater complication; so
he made, as he would probably have said, a jolly lot of this. "Ah, that
was nice of you. And natural. _That's_ all right!"

"No"--she spoke from a deeper depth--"it's altogether wrong. For
whatever happens I must now accept it."

"Well, say you must"--he really declined not to treat it almost as
rather a "lark"--"if we can at least go on talking."

"Ah, we _can_ at least go on talking!" she perversely sighed. "I can say
anything I like so long as I don't say it to _him_" she almost wailed.
But she added with more firmness: "I can still hope--and I can still
pray."

He set free again with a joyous gesture all his confidence. "Well, what
more _could_ you do, anyhow? So isn't that enough?"

It took her a moment to say, and even then she didn't. "Is it enough for
_you_, Mr. Crimble?"

"What _is_ enough for me"--he could for his part readily name it--"is
the harm done you at our last meeting by my irruption; so that if you
got his consent to see me----!"

"I didn't get his consent!"--she had turned away from the search