"But our love," John protested helplessly. "Who said ’our love,’" Marien declaimed almost petulantly. "I have not confessed to any love." "But—but," and John’s eyes opened widely, "you would not permit—" "I did not permit," she flashed. "You took, and I forgave because I told you I could understand. Can you not, blind man, also understand? If man is sometimes man, will not woman also sometimes be woman?" "Did it mean—no more than that?" John’s eyes searched hers accusingly. Her answer was to scorn to answer. She made it seem that she was dismissing him, exactly as any heartless woman might dismiss a favorite who had amused her for an hour, but whose antics and cajoleries had now begun to pall. Dazed and dumb, Hampstead seemed to feel his way backward toward the door, where Julie came mysteriously, unsummoned, to help him on with his coat and thrust his hat into his hand. When John turned for a last look, Marien’s back was turned, and though the head was bowed and the side of the face half concealed, he thought he saw a look of agony upon it. "Marien," he murmured hoarsely, with sudden emotion. "Marien!" But on the instant she raised her face to him, and it was the old face, wonderful and witching, beaming with a happy, cordial smile as she laid her hand in his without a sign of restraint of any sort. The very heartlessness of it completed his bewilderment. Did the woman not know that she was breaking his heart? It killed his hope; it cowed him and threw him into a sullen mood. "Good-by, Miss Dounay," he said huskily. Her eloquent eyes shot him a look in which reproach and tenderness mingled, while her hand pulsed quickly like a heart beating in his palm. What mood of sullenness could withstand that look? Not his. He smiled, as if a ray of sunshine played upon his face, and amended with: "Good night, Marien." "Good-by, John," she answered sweetly. The door was closed behind him before John realized that with all her sweetness, she had said good-by, and the emphasis was on the "by." At the corner the bewildered man turned and looked up. He could see the lace curtain at the window, but he could not see the pillows on the divan quivering with sobs from a soft burden that had flung itself among them when the door was closed. *CHAPTER XIII* *THE SCENE PLAYED OUT* Marien Dounay loved him, but for the sake of her own ambition was trying to kill that love. This was the explanation which the sleepless, tossing hours fed again and again into John Hampstead’s mind until he accepted it as the demonstrated truth.