nd not seeing you. And when I've been away a year or
so, perhaps I'll get control of myself again."

Going away!--to try to forget!--no doubt, to succeed in forgetting!
Then this was her last chance.

"Must I go, Mildred? Won't you relent?"

"I don't love you--and I never can." She was deathly white and
trembling. She lifted her eyes to begin a retreat, for her courage had
quite oozed away. He was looking at her, his face distorted with a
mingling of the passion of desire and the passion of jealousy. She
shrank, caught at the back of a chair for support, felt suddenly strong
and defiant. To be this man's plaything, to submit to his moods, to
his jealousies, to his caprices--to be his to fumble and caress, his to
have the fury of his passion wreak itself upon her with no response
from her but only repulsion and loathing--and the long dreary hours and
days and years alone with him, listening to his commonplaces, often so
tedious, forced to try to amuse him and to keep him in a good humor
because he held the purse-strings--

"Please go," she said.

She was still very young, still had years and years of youth unspent.
Surely she could find something better than this. Surely life must
mean something more than this. At least it was worth a trial.

He held out his hand. She gave him her reluctant and cold fingers. He
said something, what she did not hear, for the blood was roaring in her
ears as the room swam round. He was gone, and the next thing she
definitely knew she was at the threshold of Cyrilla's room. Cyrilla
gave her a tenderly sympathetic glance. She saw herself in a mirror and
knew why; her face was gray and drawn, and her eyes lay dully deep
within dark circles.

"I couldn't do it," she said. "I sent for him to marry him. But I
couldn't."

"I'm glad," said Cyrilla. "Marriage without love is a last resort. And
you're a long way from last resorts."

"You don't think I'm crazy?"

"I think you've won a great victory."

"Victory!" And Mildred laughed dolefully. "If this is victory, I hope
I'll never know defeat."

Why did Mildred refuse Stanley Baird and cut herself off from him, even
after her hopes of Donald Keith died through lack of food, real or
imaginary? It would be gratifying to offer this as a case of pure
courage and high principle, untainted of the motives which govern
ordinary human actions. But unluckily this is a biography, not a
romance, a history and not a eulogy. And M