Clifford did not reply, and his silence caused her to turn. At sight of him the tint of autumn rose left her dark face. “Mr. Clifford!” she breathed. “Good-afternoon--” He hesitated; the last time he had spoken to her, six months before, he had called her Mary. “Good-afternoon, Miss Regan.” And then the fear that was in him caused him quickly to add, “Or should I say Mrs. Gardner?” “I am still Mary Regan.” She moved nearer. “You here! The name you sent up was Mr. Loveman.” “I used Mr. Loveman’s name because I thought if I sent my own you would refuse to see me.” “Why?” He had searched her out primarily to learn the danger she was in and to save her from it, but here he was in the first moment speaking of himself. “I reasoned that you did not want to see me from the fact that you have been in town a week and have sent me no word. And I thought, after your promise--” He could not finish. She motioned him to be seated, herself took a chair, and there was a moment’s pause. Pale, a strained composure in her face, she was wondrously striking in the gold-brown velvet with its margin of fur; she seemed to have matured, yet to have grown no older; and never before had she seemed more poignantly desirable to him. The old questions that had haunted him for six months, surged up and he was almost choked with the immanence of the answer to them. Had there come the change that they had talked about? Had she reached the decision that he had so long been waiting for? At length she spoke, and the contralto warmth and color of her voice were subdued to a neutral monotone. “I could have sent you word,” she said. “But I have no excuse to offer, and prefer not to explain.” “You know what I’ve been hoping for--and waiting for,” he said with difficulty. “You have not forgotten that last night in Washington Square?” “No. And you have not forgotten the point I then insisted upon--that I wanted to go off, alone, to examine myself and try to learn whether I was really the sort of woman you declared me to be.” “I remember. And now that you have been away, and come back?” Her voice was steady. “I have learned I am not that kind of woman.” “No?” “I have learned that I do not look upon life--that is life for myself--in the way you thought I would.” “Just what do you mean?” “I know now that I am by nature more worldly than you believed me.” He grew suddenly sick at her even words. “I was hoping that you would have decided that you cared for me.” “I am and always shall be grateful to you for the things you did for me, and I shall always appreciate your high opinion of the qualities you believed to exist in me. You were kind and generous--and I shall never forget.” “But you have no other feeling--toward me?” She shook her head. “Then this is final--as far as my hopes are concerned,” he whispered dryly. He was dazed; too dazed to note that she had grown even more pale than a few moments before and that her hands were gripping folds of the velvet gown.