"You could not have spoken to me in the old days as you do now. Your instinct would have held you back. And something has happened to me." Then she began talking to him as frankly and simply as a child to a child. It was foolish and selfish, but it had hurt her when he told her that he no longer had his old feeling for her. It was selfish and cruel, but it was true, however selfish and cruel it seemed, and was--but she had felt hurt. Perhaps that was vanity, which was not to her credit--but that, too, she could not help. It had hurt her every time he had said anything from which she could infer that her influence over him was less than it once was--although, as a rule, she did not like to have influence over people. Maybe he wounded her as his friend in this way, and perhaps there was a little vanity in this, too--but a curious change was taking place in their relations. Once he was always trying to please her, and in those days she would have made him suffer if he had spoken to her then as he had lately--but he would not have spoken that way then. And now she wondered why she was not angry instead of being hurt. And she wondered why she did not like him less. Somehow, it seemed quite fair that she should be the one to suffer now, and she was glad to take her share--she had caused him and others so much pain. "_He_"--not even now did she mention his name--"wrote to me again, not long ago, asking to see me again. It was impossible. And it was the thought of you that made me know how impossible it was--_you_." The girl laughed, almost hardly, but she was thinking of herself when she did--not of him. The time and circumstance that make woman the thing apart in a man's life must come sooner or later to all women, and women must yield; she knew that, but she had never thought they could come to her--but they had come, and she, too, must give way.