"You don't know how hard it was," he continued meaningly. "For if I had chosen----" "No!" she cried again. "Yes! Do you think I did not know? _Yes!_ I might have had your promise then! I might have had----" He checked himself, but she did not attempt a second denial. "Well, enough of this," said Reynold, after a moment. "It need not trouble you long. Look in the _Times_ and you will soon see the end of it. But you can remember, if you like, that one man loved you, at any rate." "One man does," said Barbara, in a voice which she tried to keep steady. "Ah, the other fellow. Well, you know about that." "Yes, I know." "And you know that in spite of all I _don't_ hate you. No, I don't, though I dare say you hate me for what I have said. But I can't help that--you asked for it." "Yes," said Barbara. "I wish I hadn't." "Forget it, then," he replied, with a gleam of triumph in his glance. "You know I can't do that," she said. She was too young to know how much may be forgotten with the help of time, and it seemed to her that Reynold's eyes would follow her to her dying day, that wherever there were shadows and silence, she would meet that reproachful, unsatisfied gaze, and hear his voice. "You are very cruel!" she exclaimed. "Am I?" he said more gently. "Poor child! I never meant to speak of this. I never could have spoken if you had not come this afternoon. I could not have told it to anybody but you, and you were out of my reach. Why did you come? You were quite safe if you had stayed away. You should have left me to sting myself to death in a ring of fire, as the scorpions do--or don't! What made you come inside the ring? It's narrow enough, God knows--!" he looked round as he spoke. "And you had all the world to choose from. As far as I was concerned you might have been in another planet. I couldn't have reached you. What possessed you to come here, to me? Well, you _did_, and you are stung. Is it my fault?" "No, mine!" said the girl, passionately. "I never meant to hurt you, and you know I didn't, but it has all gone wrong from first to last. Anyhow, you have revenged yourself now. I wish--I _wish_ that you were well, and strong, and rich----" "That you might have the luxury of hating me? No, no, Barbara. I'm dying, and no one in all the world will miss me. I leave my memory to you." He smiled as he spoke, but his utterance almost failed him, and Barbara's answer was a sob. "I take it, then," she said in a choked voice. "Perhaps I should have been too happy if I had not known--I might never have thought about other people. But I sha'n't forget." Then she saw that he had sunk back into his chair, and his face, which had fallen on the dull red leather, was a picture of death. The marble bust in Mitchelhurst Church did not look more bloodless. "Oh!" said Barbara, "you are tired!" "Mortally," he replied, faintly unclosing his lips. "Good-bye."