“There is nothing to say so! How do you know?” Her angry red mouth made him savage. “_I_ say so! It’s _mine_!” She gasped, suddenly in a panic. “I don’t want to sing it! I don’t know it! I—I don’t like it!” Her helpless confusion shook him to tenderness. “Try this last verse with me,” he pleadingly insisted. She began, as though she could not help herself, in an uncertain voice: “Soon after she was gone from me A traveler came by Silently, invisibly. He took her with a sigh!” Her voice fluttered on the last word—forsook the note. He looked up to see her, large-eyed, pale, staring at him. The significance in the words had seized her. Had he told her flatly that she loved him, he could not have had her more by surprise. “I—you—” she stammered. The blood rushed back to her face. The tears were too many for her eyes. He sprang up. “For God’s sake—_don’t_ cry!” He took her in his arms, and kissed her over-brimmed eyes as if she were a child. She might well have been, so pliant she was to his touch, so comforted with his lips on her eyes and forehead. An instant before, antagonists; now their pulses had the throb of one. It was a miracle—wonderful! He kissed her on the mouth. [Illustration: “‘_For God’s sake—don’t cry!_’”] Consciousness was in that kiss. For a moment it knit them closer together. Then she stiffened in his arms, thrust at him with a fury of strength. He let her go. She drew back; she looked at him with a breathless expectation—then beseeching bewilderment. He looked at her, and remembered Florence. What had he done! Ever so slightly he hesitated. Ever so little his face changed. But she saw. Her look froze. All that she had heard—and forgotten—came back to her. Blind misunderstanding! Terrible humiliation! She covered her face with her hands. She couldn’t understand what he was saying; she was deaf—blind. He tried to uncover her face. “Let me go, let me go!” she implored. She escaped him. Her skirts swept his feet in going. The curtains whispered where her passage stirred them. A fragment of lace was in his fingers. The hollow wood of the piano seemed to hold the echo of the last note sung. He stared at the floor, seeing her last look. How it had despised him! Worse—it had despised herself. The past hour had been but a succession of violent emotions and inconsequent actions. He had rushed along with them, without the ability to think; and here was the climax—the result! He had wounded the one whom, above all others, he wanted to protect. Why had his tongue hesitated with a scruple? It was too late then! Better have lied to Florence than let a false honor hold back the truth from the woman he loved. _Loved!_ He stared at this fact—recognized it, astounding, impossible as it seemed. This fiery girl had disenchanted him of every other thing but her own passionate presence.