nks in the kitchen border, and touch the cresses by the
brook, cool and green and wet. All the sullen drums and whining flutes
would sink to silence, and I would hear the little yellow-headed cousin
of the vicar's singing in the twilight, singing, 'There is a lady, sweet
and kind' and 'Weep you no more, sad fountains' and 'Hark, hark, the
lark.' And the small painted yellow faces and the little wicked hands
and perfumed fans would vanish and I would see again the gay beauty of
the lady who hung above the mantel in the long drawing-room, the lady
who laughed across the centuries in her white muslin frock, with eyes
that matched the blue ribbon in her wind-blown curls--the lady who was
as young and lovely as England, for all the years! Oh, I would remember,
I would remember! It was twilight, and I was hurrying home through the
dusk after tennis at the rectory; there was a bell ringing quietly
somewhere and a moth flying by brushed against my face with velvet--and
I could smell the hawthorn hedge glimmering white, and see the first
star swinging low above the trees, and lower still, and brighter still,
the lights of home.--And then before my very eyes, they would fade, they
would fade, dimmer and dimmer--they would flicker and go out, and I
would be back again, with tawdriness and shame and vileness fast about
me--and I would pay."

"But now you have paid enough," Daphne told him. "Oh, surely,
surely--you have paid enough. Now you have come home--now you can
forget."

"No," said Stephen Fane. "Now I must go."

"Go?" At the small startled echo he raised his head.

"What else?" he asked. "Did you think that I would stay?"

"But I do not want you to go." Her lips were white, but she spoke very
clearly.

Stephen Fane never moved but his eyes, dark and wondering, rested on her
like a caress.

"Oh, my little Loveliness, what dream is this?"

"You must not go away again, you must not."

"I am baser than I thought," he said, very low. "I have made you pity
me, I who have forfeited your lovely pity this long time. It cannot even
touch me now. I have sat here like a dark Othello telling tales to a
small white Desdemona, and you, God help me, have thought me tragic and
abused. You shall not think that. In a few minutes I will be gone--I
will not have you waste a dream on me. Listen--there is nothing vile
that I have not done--nothing, do you hear? Not clean sin, like
murder--I have cheated at cards, and played with loaded