'I will go if you send me,' replied Ellice, rising with an unhurried movement, and standing in slender gracefulness before him. 'If that advice comes from your heart, Geoffrey, I will do even that for you, if it will make you happier. But--will you be happier? Am I grown ugly and hateful to you? Look at me, Geoffrey! You used to think my lips were beautiful.' 'Look at this!' returned he, breaking out into fierceness. He unfolded the letter, and showed her the black bow and the dried rosebud. 'These came from you. I have kept them till now, but at the moment you came in I was going to burn them, and let that part of my life be annihilated with them; for I had begun a new life, which they dishonoured. Why do you come now? You promised to come before that flower faded. Did you think it was immortal?' 'You have kept it all this time,' said Ellice softly, drawing a deep breath. 'Then, perhaps, it may not be too late to make it bloom again. Shall we try, Geoffrey?' His eyes and face glowed; he felt himself drawn towards her as by the strong current of a river; their hands met, when, as if by some sudden impulse independent of his own will, he uttered the words: 'We cannot; I am going to be married.' At first it seemed as if this announcement had produced no effect whatever upon Ellice. She continued to clasp Geoffrey's hands, and her gaze was untroubled. But presently she began slowly to grow pale, until her whole face was quite white, while her eyes darkened until they appeared black. Her lips fell apart a little, and it was with difficulty that she moved them to say: 'You--I did not hear. What was it?' Geoffrey did not speak again. It was with a conscious effort that he held himself upright, and looked at her. He wished this were over. Ellice now slipped her hands from his and drew them back against her shoulders, as if they had touched something unwholesome; but all the while she kept questioning him with a gaze half incredulous, half wistful. At last, however, and all at once, the full significance of what he had told her seemed to leap into her mind, charging her features with a vivid and sinister expression, the like of which Geoffrey had never seen in her before. It ended in her laughing somewhat shrilly, and sitting down again in her chair. She felt nervously for her handkerchief, and having got it, pressed it several times to her mouth. 'You took me quite by surprise,' she began, in a thin voice. 'You are really going to be married! How dramatically you brought it out! Who--may I ask to whom?' 'No name that you have ever heard,' said Geoffrey stolidly. 'And you have been engaged to her long? You love her passionately, of course?' 'We have been engaged about three weeks. She deserves the best love----' 'Yes--I didn't mean to pry into your tender affairs! Geoffrey, have you kissed her--often, I mean?' 'Yes, a hundred times,' he answered, between his teeth.