esentment was more bitter. "Does she realize what
she's done to me?"

"I think she does. In fact, it's the only thing she does realize very
clearly now. She talks of it continually, in her dreamy way--but a way
that's quite heartbreaking. I really think that if you were to see
her--"

He looked up under his lids and brows as she hesitated. "Well?" The
tone was as savage as courtesy would let him make it.

"That you'd forgive her."

His body bounded to an upright attitude, his hands thrust deep into
pockets. "No." If the word had been louder it would have been a shout.
"I shall never forgive her."

There was no change in her sweet reasonableness. "I don't see what you
gain by that."

"I gain this much--that I don't do it."

"I still can't see that it makes your situation any better, while it
makes hers a good deal worse."

"If hers is worse, mine _is_ better. The woman deliberately wrecked my
life after I'd been kind to her--for years."

"The poor thing didn't do it deliberately, Mr. Walker. She did it
because she couldn't help it--because she loved you so."

He shook himself impatiently. "Ah, what kind of love is that?"

The audacity of her response--the curious audacity of shyness--seemed to
him extraordinary only when, later, he thought it over. "I dare say it
isn't a very high kind of love--but there was no question of its being
that--from the first. Was there?"

"All the more reason then why she should have kept where she belonged."

"Yes, of course. And yet it's difficult for love to keep itself where it
belongs when it's very--very consuming."

He leaned back in his chair, eying her. If he spoke roughly it was only
because she had roused all his emotions on his own behalf, as well as a
faint subconscious interest in herself. "Look here, Miss Bland. How much
do you know about this?"

"Oh, I know all about it," she assured him, hurrying to explain, in
answer to something she saw in his face: "Uncle Emery didn't tell me. I
read it first in the papers--you remember there was a lot of talk about
it in the papers--and then every one was talking of it. I couldn't help
knowing. Uncle Emery," she added, "only told me one tiny little thing,
which couldn't do any one any harm."

"And that was--?"

"Miss Clare's address. I asked him for it when I found that I--that I
wanted to go and see her."

"And why on earth should you want to go and see her--a young girl like
you?"

Her blush was like a color fr