‘I won’t believe it!’ he exclaimed passionately, feeling very much like that spoiled child who will not forego his desire for the moon. ‘Give me only a chance. Do not be so cruel as to refuse me your friendship: let me see you sometimes, as you might if we had met in society. Forgive me for my audacity in approaching you as I have done to-day. Remember it was only by such a step I could cross the barrier that divides us. I have waited so long for this opportunity: for pity’s sake do not tell me that I have waited in vain.’ He stood bareheaded in the fading sunlight—young, handsome—his candid face glowing with fervour and truth; a piteous appealing expression in those eyes that had been wont to look out upon life with so gay and hopeful a glance,—not a man to be lightly scorned, it would seem; not a wooer whose loyal passion a wise woman would have spurned. ‘I can only repeat what I have already told you,’ Mrs. Bertram said quietly, as unmoved by his appeal as if beneath her statuesque beauty there had been nothing but marble; no pitiful impulsive woman’s heart to be melted by his warmth, or touched by his self-abasement. ‘Nothing could be more foolish or more useless than this fancy—’ ‘Fancy!’ he repeated bitterly. ‘It is the one heartfelt passion of a lifetime, and you call it fancy!’ ‘Nothing could be more foolish,’ she went on, regardless of his interruption. ‘I cannot accept your friendship in the present; I cannot contemplate the possibility of returning your affection in the future. My path in life lies clear and straight before me—very narrow, very barren, perhaps—and it must be trodden in solitude, except for that dear child. Forget your mistaken admiration for one who has done nothing to invite it. Go back to the beaten way of life. What is that Byron says, Byron who had drained the cup of all passions? Love makes so little in a man’s existence. You are young, rich, unfettered, with all the world before you, Mr. Hossack. Thank God for so many blessings, and’—with a little laugh that had some touch of bitterness—‘do not cry for the moon.’ She left him, with a grave inclination of the proud head, and went away to look for her child—left him planted there, ashamed of himself and his failure; loving her desperately, yet desperately angry with her; ready, had there only been a loaded pistol within reach, to blow his brains out on the spot. CHAPTER VII. ‘SORROW HAS NEED OF FRIENDS.’ Geoffrey went to the concert at the Stillmington Assembly Rooms that evening, his disappointment notwithstanding. Granted that he had comported himself in a mean and cad-like fashion; granted that this woman he loved was colder than granite, unapproachable as the rocky spurs of Australian mountains, whose sheer height the foot of man has never scaled; granted that his passion was of all follies the maddest,—he loved her still. That one truth remained, unshaken and abiding, fixed as the centre of this revolving globe. He loved her.