Then they both laughed again, and Gay's spirits rose enormously. "I will ask them down without Captain Conant," said Rensslaer, and he did, and somehow he and Gay managed to lose them in the park, and as it was some miles in length, and Carlton especially absent-minded that afternoon, this was not difficult. "Gay looks ill," Carlton said abruptly, revealing the direction his thoughts had taken, when they turned to find their companions vanished. "Of course," said Lossie, and shrugged her shoulders. "Why of course?" He spoke sharply, with an intense feeling of humiliation. Lossie, turning to look at him, thought a little cruelly of _her_ bitter hour; it was his turn now. "Can't you see that she is utterly wretched," she said, "and thinks it her fault that Chris Hannen is trying to kill himself harder than ever?" "It's the behaviour of a moral coward," said Carlton sternly; "but he was never half good enough for her." "Oh," said Lossie, "it isn't what is good enough for us, but what we _want_, that matters!" He turned to look at her--eyes, lips, hair, every bit of her, warm with--what? And he was cold, so cold, bleeding in his pride and self-esteem, it was Gay he wanted, but she had gone far to freeze out all the love that was in him.... "And is it George Conant you want so badly?" he said quietly, but with a sensation of stealing warmth in his veins to which they were of late unaccustomed. "I am going to marry him," she said contemptuously, "and there will be five miserable people more in the world, including Chris!" "Why should you be miserable?" he said, but his voice was not very steady, and his eyes were trying to force hers to meet them. "I'm sure Conant will not be." "It is not _his_ happiness or mine, that counts with you, but only Gay's," said Lossie, quietly. He did not deny it, and a pang ran through the girl. He would never love anyone but Gay; still, did that matter? Lossie had enough love for both--through suffering she had come to know that the fulness of joy is in loving, not in being loved. Involuntarily both had stopped, and in the wintry afternoon, with skeleton trees all about them, they were looking in each other's faces--in that moment Carlton saw his way clear, saw the road that led to Gay's happiness, if not his own--and took it. * * * * * * * Lossie had never looked so lovely in her life, or Carlton so manly, if frightfully pale, than when, after an hour's absence, they came in, and Gay got Lossie up into her bedroom, shut the door, and turned round to remark: "_Poor_ Conant!" That she did not say "Poor Carlton!" was part of the tragedy of the whole thing--for him. "Oh, Gay," cried Lossie, "I didn't ask him this time"--she blushed warmly--"but I've been doing pretty much the same thing in a different way." "Poor Conant!" said Gay again. "As Chris would say, he'll be all top-boots and no grin!"