His face was fully unmasked, and she moved abruptly to it as to a magnet. In another moment they were in the more certain seclusion of the vestibule, and she was in his arms. They clung together with a passion which despair with ironic compensation made perfect, and their first kiss which was to be their last expressed for a moment the longing of the year of their love and of the years that were to come. That such a moment ever could end was so incredible that when Betty suddenly found herself alone she looked about in every direction for him, and then the blood rushed through her in a tide of impotent fury. It was this blind rage that enabled her to go back to the parlor and keep up until the Carters went home a few moments later, and her mother had gone to bed. Then she went to her boudoir and locked herself in. How she got through that night without sending him an imperious summons she never knew, unless it were that she found some measure of relief in a letter she wrote to him. If she could not see him, he was still her lover, her only intimate friend, and her confessor. She promised not to write again, but she demanded what help he could give her. She sent the letter in the morning, and he replied at once:-- I know. Do you think it was necessary to tell me? Do you suppose my mind left you for a moment last night, and that I know and love you so little that I failed to imagine and understand in a single particular? If I were less of a man and more of a god, I should go to you and give you the help you need, but I am only strong enough to keep away from you. Not in thought, however,--if that is any help. We shall meet in public and speak together. I have no desire to forget you nor that you should forget me. We neither of us shall forget, but we shall live and endure, as the strongest of us always do. You tell me that you are tormented by the thought that you have added to my trials. Remember that all other trials sink into insignificance beside this, and yet that this greatest that has come to me in a long life is glorified by the fact of its existence. And if it is almost a relief to know that I shall not see you alone again, it is a satisfaction and a joy to remember that I have kissed you. R.N. VIII For a few days Betty was almost happy again. She had come so close to the nucleus of love that it had warmed her veins and intoxicated her brain. Imagination for a brief moment had given place to reality, and if she felt wiser and older still than after her five months of meditation on the events of the summer, she felt less sober. One great desire of the past year had been fulfilled, and its memory sparkled in her brain, and her heart was lighter. It had been hours before she had ceased to feel the pressure of his arms.