"Ever since that day in Switzerland, I have been thinking of you, Sylvia, remembering your looks, your smile, and the words you spoke. I crossed the Col Dolent the next day, and all the time I felt that there was some great thing wanting. I said to myself, 'I miss my friend.' I was wrong, Sylvia. I missed you. Something ached in me--has ached ever since. It was my heart! Come with me now!" Sylvia had not looked at him, though she made no effort to draw her hands away, and still not looking at him, she answered in a whisper: "I can't, I can't." "Why?" he asked, "why? You are not happy here. You are no happier than you were at Chamonix. And I would try so very hard to make you happy. I can't leave you here--lonely, for you are lonely. I am lonely too; all the more lonely because I carry about with me--you--you as you stood in the chalet at night looking through the open window, with the candle-light striking upward on your face, and with your reluctant smile upon your lips--you as you lay on the top of the Aiguille d'Argentière with the wonder of a new world in your eyes--you as you said good-by in the sunset and went down the winding path to the forest. If you only knew, Sylvia!" "Yes, but I don't know," she answered, and now she looked at him. "I suppose that, if I loved, I should know, I should understand." Her hands lay in his, listless and unresponsive to the pressure of his. She spoke slowly and thoughtfully, meeting his gaze with troubled eyes. "Yet you were glad to see me when I came," he urged. "Glad, yes! You are my friend, my one friend. I was very glad. But the gladness passed. When you asked me to come with you across the garden, I was wanting you to go away." The words hurt him. They could not but hurt him. But she was so plainly unconscious of offence, she was so plainly trying to straighten out her own tangled position, that he could feel no anger. "Why?" he asked; and again she frankly answered him. "I was humbled," she replied, "and I have had so much humiliation in my life." The very quietude of her voice and the wistful look upon the young tired face hurt him far more than her words had done. "Sylvia," he cried, and he drew her toward him. "Come with me now! My dear, there will be an end of all humiliation. We can be married, we can go down to my home on the Sussex Downs. That old house needs a mistress, Sylvia. It is very lonely." He drew a breath and smiled suddenly. "And I would like so much to show you it, to show you all the corners, the bridle-paths across the downs, the woods, and the wide view from Arundel to Chichester spires. Sylvia, come!" Just for a moment it seemed that she leaned toward him. He put his arm about her and held her for a moment closer. But her head was lowered, not lifted up to his; and then she freed herself gently from his clasp.