She reentered the house, cold and dizzy, just as her partner arrived with the coffee. She explained--what scarcely needed to be told--that she felt faint: she must go up-stairs. In three minutes she had put her satin-slippered feet into a pair of water-proof overshoes, pinned up her trailing skirts, thrown on her long wadded mantle, with sleeves and hood, and had got down-stairs again before "assistance" could arrive. All the time, there was a burning and tingling where his lips had been, but she would not put up her hand to touch the spot, and relieve the sensation. It was, in a manner, sacred to her; albeit the sanctity was largely mingled with bewilderment, remorse, and fear. When she came out, Bressant was standing where she had left him, tossing a couple of snow-balls from one hand to another. He dropped them as she approached, and brushed the snow from his gloves. She took the arm he offered her--timidly, and yet feeling that it was all in the world she had to cling to. It was true--by that kiss she belonged to him, for it had made her a traitor to all else on whom she had hitherto had a claim. Yet upon how different a footing did they stand with one another from that which she had prefigured to herself! This was he whom she was to have brought vanquished to her feet! With one motion of his strong, masculine hand he had swept away all her fine-spun cobwebs of opportunity and method, and had laid his clutch upon the very marrow of her soul. But though she had lost the command, she was party, if not principal, to the guilt. It was he who had taken fire from her. "You remember last summer," said he, "that night when an arch was in the sky? We didn't understand one another then, and I didn't understand myself. But, during the last day or two, I've been thinking it all over. I've had too good an opinion of myself all along." "What is it that you've been thinking?" asked Cornelia, feeling repelled, and yet driven, by a piteous necessity, to know all the contents, good or bad, of this heart which was her only possession. "Of all that had been said or done this last half-year. There's nothing you care for more than me, is there?" he demanded, concentrating the greatest emphasis into the question. "If you care for me--if I can be every thing to you"--Cornelia's voice was broken and tossed upon the uncontrolled waves of fighting emotions, and she could give little care to the form and manner of her speech. "I love you--of course I love you!--what else is there for me to do? But I've been all this time trying to find out what love was. I thought I loved Sophie, you know." Bressant's strange words and altered manner dismayed Cornelia. What was the matter with him? She could not get it out of her head that some awful event must have happened, but she knew not how to frame inquiries. Bressant continued--a determined levity in his tone was yet occasionally broken down by a stroke of feeling terribly real: