Her throat swelled, she bit the inside of her lower lip pitilessly to stay its quivering, but was scarcely conscious of the tears that poured down her cheeks unheeded. After a minute's futile struggle to retain some show of self-command, she moved away a step or two, sank into an armchair, buried her face in the cushions, and sobbed without restraint. A tumultuous medley of wild impassioned ideas surged within her brain, incomplete thoughts, disconnected and rapidly cast aside. But, amid them all, were none urging calm submission, dignified resignation. On the contrary, all alike were directed on evolving some method of warding off this unendurable blow--or, at least, since it had fallen, of nullifying its effects. The thing seemed so incredible, unreal, impossible, the end of all life. She resolutely declined to admit that there was nothing whatsoever to be done; she could not consent to allow all hope to leave her. And yet--yet--immovable and grim, the bedrock underlying these wild surgings of despised and deserted love, was the conviction that her richest store of eloquence, the whole of her most intense and protracted efforts, would prove powerless to alter the inevitable. Distracted, tortured, she gasped between her sobs-- "I shall kill myself." Morris was just in the act of stealing softly from the room. Looking rather foolish, he turned sharply, and crossed over to her side. "Tut, tut! You don't know what you're saying now, you're talking wildly," he declared soothingly. "You really mustn't take things so to heart. You'll make yourself quite ill. Go and lie down quietly, and I'll send Bianca in to you with a cup of tea." "You think I don't know what I'm saying, but I know that I'm not saying half I feel," she declared truthfully enough. Then, after a moment's further reflection, her momentary composure again gave way. "Oh, how could you make me love you, only to treat me like this? It was cruel, brutal! How can I bear it?" Morris patted her shoulder encouragingly, but remained silent. He had been through a few tempestuous scenes ere this, and knowing that a man did not shine on such occasions, was resigned to looking and feeling foolish while it lasted, devoting his efforts chiefly to getting the _mauvais_ _quart d'heure_ over as quietly as possible. For this, his one theory lay in the proverb, "Least said, soonest mended." Evarne put out her hand and pushed him away. "Don't do that--don't! You know you hate me now." Again Morris smiled; women always went to such extremes. "Bless you, not a bit of it! Why, I hope we are going to part the best of friends," was his lightly spoken disavowal of this accusation. "To part!" murmured Evarne, after him, monotonously--"to part!"