"Yes, if you've not forgotten what you felt for me. If the memories are not all mine, you can even do that. You see I'm a fool still; I--I half hoped that you'd remember.... Joan, 'you were not once so wise!'" "Ah!" she said. "If I were younger now--or if you had been older then--who knows?" "Could you sing that song still?" he asked. "Listen." He opened the piano, and played a few bars. "Can you?" "Oh!" She forced a laugh. "It was too long ago. And what a song besides!" "Try," he pleaded. "Try it!" "I can't remember the words," she murmured "The words?-- 'You tell me, Love, that I'll forget you-- I own it, in our last "good-bye,"' I'd be so grateful. Please!" "How does it go on?" "It goes on-- 'Our dream has been too sweet to let you Remember that I spoke a lie.'" "Oh yes," she said, coming forward. She hummed. "Let me see!-- 'I know the years will crowd above you, I know despair must fade away; But here and now I know I love you, I love you--and we part--to-day.' Is that it?" "That's it; and then there's what I was playing-- 'To-day, to-day our dream is over, To-day the waking, cold and grey.'" She nodded; "Yes, yes-- 'What care I Time will--' something, what is it?-- 'The throes that rend my heart to-day?' Well, I'll try, but I'm sure I sha'n't be able to. I haven't heard it for years." Then she sat down, and began it; and he shut his eyes and tried to think he was seventeen and she was twenty. The music stopped short. "I knew it would be a failure! It's gone. It was too long ago," she repeated. "It was yesterday!" he cried, and caught her in his arms as she got up. For a second she held him back from her, regarding him curiously. Regret, tenderness, irony were mingled in the gaze she bent on him. Like him she mourned for what had perished; like him she sought to delude herself that it bloomed anew.... "It's absurd," she said, and drooped to him with a kiss. As they moved apart, both were disappointed. The man thought, "I have spoilt my memory of her kiss to me in Rouen." "I adore you," he said mechanically. The woman's smile was enigmatic as she left him. CHAPTER XII "Are you heartless?" he continued; "have you no pity for me?" It was the next evening. They were sitting among the basket chairs and the dinner dresses in the garden, and there was no one inconveniently near. Lady Bletchworth had gone inside a few minutes before. A warm breeze bore strains of Chopin to them from the _Kursaal_; the little fountain plashed languidly, and a full moon had been assisting Conrad to deceive himself. "I am not heartless," returned Mrs. Adaile, "I am sensible. And--there are a thousand reasons." "For one thing?" "For one thing.... I don't want romance--I want comedy. I want to laugh with you, my dear Con, not to be serious." This was difficult to answer, for he could not offer to laugh at his grand passion. He sighed.