"I think you may have. There will be no time for more folly; I must repair the loss of many wasted days,--nay, not wasted if I have learned this lesson well. Rest secure; it is impossible that I should love." "You believed that three months ago and yet you are a lover now." Ottila smiled an exultant smile, and Warwick acknowledged his proven fallibility by a haughty flush and a frank amendment. "Let it stand, then, that if I love again I am to wait in silence till the year is out and you absolve me from my pledge. Does that satisfy you?" "It must. But you will come, whatever changes may befall you? Promise me this." "I promise it." "Going so soon? Oh, wait a little!" "When a duty is to be done, do it at once; delay is dangerous. Good night." "Give me some remembrance of you. I have nothing, for you are not a generous lover." "Generous in deeds, Ottila. I have given you a year's liberty, a dear gift from one who values it more than life. Now I add this." He drew her to him, kissed the red mouth and looked down upon her with a glance that made his man's face as pitiful as any woman's as he let her lean there happy in the hope given at such cost. For a moment nothing stirred in the room but the soft whisper of the wind. For a moment Warwick's austere life looked hard to him, love seemed sweet, submission possible; for in all the world this was the only woman who clung to him, and it was beautiful to cherish and be cherished after years of solitude. A long sigh of desire and regret broke from him, and at the sound a stealthy smile touched Ottila's lips as she whispered, with a velvet cheek against his own-- "Love, you will stay?" "I will not stay!" And like one who cries out sharply within himself, "Get thee behind me!" he broke away. "Adam, come back to me! Come back!" He looked over his shoulder, saw the fair woman in the heart of the warm glow, heard her cry of love and longing, knew the life of luxurious ease that waited for him, but steadily went out into the night, only answering-- "In a year." CHAPTER II. WHIMS. "Come, Sylvia, it is nine o'clock! Little slug-a-bed, don't you mean to get up to-day?" said Miss Yule, bustling into her sister's room with the wide-awake appearance of one to whom sleep was a necessary evil, to be endured and gotten over as soon as possible. "No, why should I?" And Sylvia turned her face away from the flood of light that poured into the room as Prue put aside the curtains and flung up the window. "Why should you? What a question, unless you are ill; I was afraid you would suffer for that long row yesterday, and my predictions seldom fail." "I am not suffering from any cause whatever, and your prediction does fail this time; I am only tired of everybody and everything, and see nothing worth getting up for; so I shall just stay here till I do. Please put the curtain down and leave me in peace."