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“You know it is true! I know it is true! And so I am going away now, Jimmy, while you can still remember that you have loved me—and before your coldness turns my heart to ice.”

He had been about to speak and she had read his words before he could utter them.

“Don’t lie to me!” she had cried fiercely. “Don’t! You have lied enough to yourself for months—don’t lie to me! You want Pat—you don’t want me! And it’s my fault! My fault! I did wrong to expose you to the gaze of a natural man-hunter. I should have killed her rather than kill you. For that’s what I’ve done! Killed you! You wrote of passionate love when you knew nothing of it—now you will be ashamed to write of it. It—it’s beastly!”

At the last bitter words she had fled from the room, leaving him sitting there staring at the door-panels, his thoughts whirling around one heavy immovable emotion—a vast self-pity.

A few minutes later she returned, bearing his breakfast tray, and had found him lying down with the sheet drawn over his head. She had regained command of herself; and, after placing the tray on a chair at his bedside, had leaned over the bed to place a gentle, pitying hand upon his head.

“Jimmy,” she had said softly, “always remember that I don’t blame you. You are caught in the torrent of which you have written so often but of whose strength you have actually known nothing. You have struggled, and are struggling, against it to the best of your ability; but you are not a god that you may order the elements.”

The yearning compassion in her voice had caused him to bury his head a little deeper in the pillow. Her hand had moved upon his hair as lightly as a fallen leaf moved by a zephyr.

“You want to do right, Jimmy—to behave towards me as you have promised before God to behave. That is the civilised conscience in you. You crave for Pat, and dare not contemplate life apart from