"You do not choose to tell me what I have done." No, why should he? The one thing he saw clearly was that the mischief was irreparable; the less said about it, therefore, the better. There was but one avenue to fortune and love for him, and it was closed before his eyes by this night's revelation. Some men would have set to work at once to make another, but not Reynold Harding. He simply accepted the decree of Fate, and felt that he had half expected it all the time. And after all, what _had_ Barbara done? Most likely he would have failed, even if his letter had been duly sent. His ill-luck would have dogged him on his way to wealth. Perhaps it was more merciful, when, with one sharp stroke, it spared him the long struggle. What right had he to find fault with Barbara, the timid messenger of misfortune? Was he to answer her brutally--"You have ruined me!"--and throw the weight of his failure on the little throbbing heart which had never been so burdened before? The very idea was absurd. It was absurd to look back, absurd to murmur; the dream of Mitchelhurst was over and done with, it was not worth a withered leaf. Let it lie where it had fallen. "Miss Strange," he said, "I assure you you are making too much of this accident. Regrets are wasted on it. Mine was a business letter, it is true, but the chances are that it would have come to nothing. I hesitated a long while before I wrote it, and I am not sure it was not a mistake. Think no more about it." "Will you write again?" she persisted. "Oh, we shall see. I'm going up to town to-morrow--I can settle everything then. I don't think there will be any occasion to write." He realised his utter severance from all his hopes when he heard himself say that he was going back to town. The girl who stood questioning him had kindled a strange brightness in his life, a light which revealed her own ripe-lipped, radiant face, and then with capricious breath had blown it out again, and left him in darkness and alone. He had lost her, and yet, by a fantastic contradiction, she had never been half so near to him as at that moment. "You are deceiving me!" she said, sorrowfully. "Don't think I don't know it! Oh, if there were anything I could do to make amends!" And in her pain and pity, and her certainty that in some unspoken way she had wronged him more than she could understand, she unconsciously swayed towards Reynold with her eyes and lips uplifted. She wanted to quiet the aching of her regret. She wanted a channel through which her over-wrought feelings, might pour in atoning self-sacrifice.