"Let us sit down," she said, drawing them away. He had a trifle too much advantage, standing so close to her, tall and firm in the dusk, knowing what he wanted, and with that tenderness in his voice. Not that she had the most far-away intention of yielding, but she did not want their little farce to be spoiled by any complications that might mar her pleasure in looking back upon it. "I think," said she, "you will find that a comfortable chair," and she showed him one which stood where all the daylight that came through the torn curtains concentrated itself. From her own seat she could draw her face into the deepest shadow in the room. She made the arrangement almost instinctively, and the lines of intensity the last week had drawn upon Cardiffs face were her first reward. "I have come to ask you to give up this thing," he said. Elfrida leaned forward a little in her favorite attitude, clasping her knee. Her eyes were widely serious. "You ask me to give it up?" she repeated slowly. "But why do you ask me?" "Because I cannot associate it with you--to me it is impossible that you should do it." Elfrida lifted her eyebrows a little. "Do you know why I am doing it?" she asked. "I think so." "It is not a mere escapade, you understand. And these people do not pay me anything. That is quite just, because I have never learned to act and I haven't much voice. I can take no part, only just--appear." "_Appear!_" Cardiff exclaimed. "Have you appeared!" "Seven times," Elfrida said simply, but she felt that she was blushing. Cardiff's anger rose up hotly within him, and strove with his love, and out of it there came a sickening sense of impotency which assailed his very soul. All his life he had had tangibilities to deal with. This was something in the air, and already he felt the apprehension of being baffled here, where he wrought for his heart and his future. "So that is a part of it," he said, with tightened lips. "I did not know."