Her head went up. "I told you just now that--I loved--you. But I've promised Anthony. He asked me that day before I went to Diana's. The day after I first saw you. And he was so good, and I was so lonely, that I thought that--I cared. I didn't know then what it meant--to care." His eyes, which had been stern, softened. "And now that you know," he asked, "what are you going to do?" She twisted her fingers nervously. "I don't know," she faltered. "What shall I do, Justin?" "Oh, my dear," he said, brokenly, "Anthony is my friend. I can't steal you--like a thief--in the night----" Her lips quivered. "I knew that--you'd say that. I am glad--you--said it." He turned away. "If you knew how hard it is for me to say it." She laid her little hand on his arm. "If you only won't be angry with me." He turned back to her. "I am not angry," he said, "only I have been--all sorts of a fool." She sank down hopelessly on a broken stone bench, backed by evergreen trees. "You haven't been a fool," she said. "I should have told you. But I couldn't. Diana wouldn't let me." [Illustration: SHE SANK DOWN HOPELESSLY] "What did Diana have to do with it?" "She said that Anthony's friends ought to know me before the engagement was announced." "So you and she have talked it over, and Sophie, I suppose--and how many others?" His laugh was not good to hear. "Oh, please. I don't think any of us could have guessed that--things would have turned out like this. I didn't dream how you felt and how I felt until the other night, when you tried to give me the little ring. Then I knew." "That you loved me?" "No. That you loved me. I--I didn't know the other until to-day when you said--'Come.'" "Didn't you know that day in the rain?" "No, oh, _no_. I thought it was just because we were both young, and good friends, and happy together." "And I thought it was because our spirits met--in the storm." He flung himself down beside her. "To me the whole thing seems monstrous. Anthony is years too old for you, even if you loved him. And you don't love him." "Yet I can't break a promise, can I?" He moved restlessly. "If you told him, he would release you, of course. But somehow I'd feel an awful cad to have Anthony think that I had taken you from him." "How do you think I should feel?" The color flamed in her cheeks. "Don't you know that a woman has just as fine a sense of honor in such things as a man?" As she made a movement to rise, he caught at the floating ends of her white veil, and held them, as if he would thus anchor her to himself. "Forgive me," he pleaded. "I'm afraid I'm too desperately unhappy to know what I am saying." "I know--I'm unhappy, too." With the fatalism of youth they had accepted their tragedy as final. He still held the end of her veil in his hand, but her face was turned away from him. A little breeze came from the west, and there was a dark line of cloud below the gold.