“Because I----” he hesitated. The truth, because she was so fair, would be an insult. “Never mind looking for a reason,” she said; and he saw that even her lips were white. “You did it, and that’s enough. If you will move your horse out of the way I will go home.” She shook from head to foot. He had kissed her, as a man kisses a girl he has met alone at a music-hall, and she had kissed him like a nun who kisses the cross. Her voice cut, but something in it made Miles Cylmer take off his hat and stand bareheaded before her. “I won’t even ask you to forgive me.” His voice was low and sweet as perhaps but one other woman knew it could be. “I behaved unpardonably. Yet if you can believe me, I was so much more than glad to see you that I--I forgot myself.” “And me!” she interrupted with a hard little smile. “You remembered me as a toy: you greeted me as one. If it is of any interest to you I may tell you the toy is--broken!” She made a little gesture and turned away without looking at him. Cylmer, leading his horse, was at her side before she had taken ten steps. “Don’t go away like this,” he said, a shamed color on his tanned cheek. “I deserve all you can say to me, and more. I only want you to let me beg your pardon. I won’t”--his keen eyes very sweet, very honest--“even ask you to forgive me.” “It would be of no use if you did,” she returned quietly. “I never forgave anything I had against any one in all my life. You were the first person I ever knew who was kind to me, and now you have made me sorry that you were.” Her even, level voice had an implacable ring to it. Cylmer, disgusted with himself, went off on a new tack. “You looked so tired that night, and so childlike,” he said, with a little pause before the last word. Ismay turned on him, her eyes full of somber fire. “You thought me some little milliner,” she cried superbly. “Yet you treated me there like a lady, while to-day----” she shrugged her lovely shoulders as though she were at a loss for words. Yet presently, as she went on, her tone softened. “I had run away that night. I had just come home from school and had no dresses fit to wear. My mother had some one to dinner, and I was too shabby to be seen. It was dull sitting alone, so I took all the money I had and went out. The reason I was hungry was that I wouldn’t eat the dinner that was sent up to me; it was horrid,” with a little laugh. “But it was a mad thing to do; don’t you know that?” he said wonderingly. “I didn’t then; I do now.” Her self-possession had come back to her; her smile had that indefinite womanly quality in it that had struck him long ago, when he had been puzzled as to her age. “You mean I have taught you this morning! Will you give me leave to try and make you forget that?” “You may never see me again.” “I will if you do not move to another planet,” remarked Mr. Cylmer deliberately, “or tell the butler you are never at home to me.”